1 September 2015 (Series 31:1) G.W. Pabst, (1929, 79 minutes)

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Directed by G. W. Pabst Written by Rudolf Leonhardt (screenplay), based on the novel by Margarete Böhme Produced by Georg Wilhelm Pabst Music by Otto Stenzeel Cinematography by Sepp Allgeier and Art Direction by Emil Hasler and Ernö Metzner

Cast ... Thymian André Roanne ... Count Nicolas Osdorff Josef Rovensk ... Robert Henning Fritz Rasp ... Meinert Vera Pawlowa ... Aunt Frieda Franziska Kinz ... Meta 1967, age 81, in , Austria). Pabst directed 41 films Arnold Korff ... Elder Count Osdorff including 1956 Durch die Wälder durch die Auen (as G.W. Andrews Engelmann The director of the establishment Pabst), 1956 Ballerina, 1955 It Happened on July ... The director's wife 20th,1955 , 1954 Afraid to Love,1954 Edith Meinhard ... Erika , 1953 Voice of Silence, 1948 Der Prozeß, Sybille Schmitz ... Elisabeth 1945 Der Fall Molander, 1943 Paracelsus, 1941 The Sig Arno ... Guest (as Siegfried Arno) Comedian, 1939 Young Girls in Trouble, 1939 Pasha's Kurt Gerron ... Dr. Vitalis Wives, 1934 (as G.W. Pabst), 1933 That Night, 1933. Adventures of Don Quixote, 1933/I Don Quichotte,1932 The Lost Atlantis, 1932 Queen of Atlantis, Directed by G. W. Pabst 1932 L'Atlantide, 1931 The 3 Penny Opera,1929 White Written by Rudolf Leonhardt (screenplay), Margarete Hell of Pitz Palu, 1929 Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929 Böhme (novel) Pandora's Box, 1928 , 1927 The Love of Produced by Georg Wilhelm Pabst Jeanne Ney, 1925 The ,1923 Der Schatz. Music by Otto Stenzeel Cinematography by Sepp Allgeier and Fritz Arno Wagner Art Direction by Emil Hasler and Ernö Metzner

Georg Wilhelm Pabst (Director) (b. August 25, 1885 in Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria- Hungary [now Roudnice, Czech Republic]—d. May 29, Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—2

Sepp Allgeier (Cinematographer) (b. February 6, 1895 in Song of Night, 1931 Comradeship, 1931 M, 1931 The 3 , Baden-Württemberg, –d. Penny Opera (as F.A. Wagner), 1929 Napoleon at St. March 11, 1968, age 73,in Ebnet, Freiburg im Breisgau). Helena, 1929 Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929 The Last Fort, Allgeier has been cinematographer on 51 film and 1929 Waterloo, 1928 Spies, 1927 Natur und Liebe television projects, among them 1959 Achtung! Ruhe! (Documentary), 1927 , 1927 A Aufnahme! (TV Series), 1951 Die Passion, 1951 Modern Du Barry, 1926 It's Easy to Become a Father, Grenzstation 58, 1950 Heimat, die uns blieb (Short), 1950 1926 Adventure Mad, 1925 The Love Pirate, 1925 The Helden der Landstraße Chronicles of the Gray House, (Documentary), 1949 Der 1923 Between Evening and große Bergpreis (Short), 1941 Morning, 1922 Der Graf von Wehrmachtsfilm, 1940 Essex, 1922 (as Campaign in Poland F.A. Wagner, photographed (Documentary), 1939 The by),1921 Destiny, 1920 Das West Wall (Documentary), Martyrium, 1919 Vendetta. 1938 The Mountain Calls (as Allgeier), 1937 Silent Barriers (photography), 1936 Louise Brooks ... Thymian Enchanted Forest (b. Mary Louise Brooks, (Documentary),1936 Youth of November 14, 1906—d. the World (Documentary August 8, 1985, age 78, in short),1935 Escape Me Never, Rochester, NY). Louise 1935 Triumph of the Will Brooks has appeared in 24 (Documentary) (photographic films including 1938 director and camera operator), Overland Stage Raiders, 1937 1934 The Legend of William Tell, 1933 Victory of the King of Gamblers (scenes deleted), 1937 When You're in Faith (Documentary), 1933 Love in Morocco, 1931 Love, 1936 Empty Saddles, 1931 Windy Riley Goes Mountains on Fire (as Allgeier),1930 Storm Over Mont Hollywood (Short), 1931 God's Gift to Women, 1931 It Blanc, 1929 White Hell of Pitz Palu, 1929 Diary of a Lost Pays to Advertise, 1930 Miss Europe, 1929 Diary of a Girl,1928 Fight for the Matterhorn, 1927 Der große Lost Girl, 1929 The Canary Murder Case, 1929 Sprung, 1927 Im Luxuszug, 1927 Alpentragödie, 1926 Pandora's Box, 1928 Beggars of Life, 1928 A Girl in Every Der heilige Berg, 1924 Die weiße Kunst (Documentary) Port, 1927 The City Gone Wild, 1927 Now We're in the ,1924 The Mountaineers,1920 Das Wunder des Air, 1927 Rolled Stockings, 1927 Evening Clothes, 1926 Schneeschuhs (Documentary). Just Another Blonde, 1926 The Show Off, 1926 It's the Old Army Game, 1926 A Fritz Arno Wagner (Cinematographer) Social Celebrity, 1926 Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, 1926 The (b. December 5, 1894, Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig, American Venus, 1925 The Street of Forgotten Men Thuringia, Germany –d. August 18, 1958, age 63, in (uncredited). Göttingen in a tragic automobile accident while shooting the comedy, Ohne Mutter geht es nicht [It Doesn't Work André Roanne ... Count Nicolas Osdorff (b. André Without a Mother] for director Erik Ode). Wagner was Roanne on September 22, 1896 in Paris, France—d. on cinematographer on 145 films including 1958 Ohne September 6, 1959, age 62, in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, Mutter geht es nicht, 1958 Wehe, wenn sie France) André Roanne has appeared in 97 films including, losgelassen,1958 The Csardas Princess,1957 Liebe, Jazz 1957 A Kiss for a Killer, 1956 Les indiscrètes, 1956 If und Übermut, 1956 My 16 Sons, 1955 The Ambassador's Paris Were Told to Us, 1955 Napoleon (uncredited), 1955 Wife (as Otto Wagner), 1954 The Faithfull Hussar, 1953 The Babes Make the Law, 1954 Les clandestines, 1954 Oh Fräulein Casanova, 1950 Das Mädchen aus der Südsee, No, Mam'zelle, 1954 La fille perdue, 1952 It Happened in 1949 The Bridge,1948 Palace Scandal, 1948 Girls Paris, 1951 The Sleepwalker,1946 Back Streets of Paris, Behind Bars, 1943 I'll Carry You on My Hands, 1943 Ein 1938 It Happened in Gibraltar, 1938 Café de Paris, 1937 glücklicher Mensch, 1943 Laugh Pagliacci, 1942 Police mondaine, 1936 Jeunes filles de Paris, 1934 Le Bismarck's Dismissal,1940 Friedrich Schiller - Der cavalier Lafleur, 1934 The Voyage of Mr. Perrichon, 1934 Triumph eines Genies, 1938 Das Mädchen mit dem guten Une nuit de folies, 1933 Pour être aimé, 1933 Baby, 1932 Ruf, 1937 Two Merry Adventurers, 1937 Glamorous Colette et son mari, 1932 L'amour en vitesse, 1932 Nicole Night, 1935 Schwarze Rosen, 1935 Turandot, princesse and Her Virtue, 1931 La chanson des nations, 1931 Ma de Chine, 1934 Prinzessin Turandot, 1934 Au bout du cousine de Varsovie, 1930 Le joker, 1930 Accused, Stand monde, 1934 Volga in Flames, 1933 The Last Will of Dr. Up!, 1930 The Virgin of Paris, 1929 Vénus, 1929 Diary of Mabuse, 1933 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1932 The a Lost Girl, 1929 Dolly, 1928 Le chauffeur de Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—3

Mademoiselle, 1927 The Chocolate Girl, 1927 La petite Pabst, G(EORG) W(ILHELM) (August 27, 1885-May fonctionnaire,1926 Duchess of the Folies Bergeres, 1926 29,1967, Austrian director and scenarist, was born in Cinders, 1926 The Cradle of God, 1925 La terre promise, Raudnitz, Bohemia then part of the Austro-Hungarian 1922 Maman Pierre, 1921 Missing Husbands, 1916 Têtes empire, now in Czechoslovakia. His father, August, was a de femmes, 1915 Feet and Hands, 1914 Le fils de la railroad official whose career took the family to Vienna divette (Short). when Pabst was still a child. At his father’s urging he first studied engineering. He soon abandoned this, toyed for a Josef Rovensk ... Robert Henning time with the idea of a military career, and finally—to his (b. April 17, 1894 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary parents’ distress—opted for the stage. In 1904 he entered [now Czech Republic] –d. on November 5, 1937, age 43, in the Vienna Academy of Decorative Arts, where he studied Prague, Czechoslovakia). Josef Rovensk has appeared in acting for two years. In 1910, after varied experience at over 76 films including 1936 Quarrymen, 1934 Za theatres in Switzerland and Germany, Pabst went to the ranních cervánku, 1933 Public Not Admitted, 1933 The United States to join the Deutsche Volkstheater in New Inspector General, 1933 Diagnosis X, 1933 Sister York, appearing in plays by Hauptmann, Schnitzler and Angelika, 1933 The Undertaker, 1932 Lelicek in the others. The theatre was controlled by labor unions and he Services of Sherlock Holmes, 1931 Milácek pluku, 1931 met a number of prominent American socialists, including Business Under Distress, 1931 The Last Bohemian, 1930 Upton Sinclair. It was at the Volkstheater that Pabst first A Girl from the Reeperbahn, 1930 Das Mädel aus U.S.A., tried his hand as a director, soon realizing that he had a 1930 Plukovník Svec, 1930 The Virgin of Paris, 1929 much greater talent for this than as an actor. In 1914 he Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929 Der Ruf des Nordens, 1929 returned to Europe to recruit new performers but, with the Der Monte Christo von Prag, 1928 Zivotem vedla je láska, outbreak of war, was detained in France as an enemy alien. 1928 Der erste Kuß, 1928 Sextánka, 1927 Schweik in Pabst spent nearly five years in a prison camp near Brest, Civilian Life, 1924 Bílý ráj, 1921 Roztrzené foto, 1919 where he organized a theatre company and presented Akord smrti, 1914 Zamilovaná tchyne. He also directed 14 French plays for the entertainment of prisoners and guards Czech films between 1920 and 1939, including, 1920 alike. In this way he acquired his lifelong admiration for Komediantka. French culture, but his imprisonment was nevertheless a painful experience which marked him deeply. Fritz Rasp ... Meinert (b. Fritz Heinrich Rasp on May 13, 1891 in Bayreuth, Germany –d. November 30, 1975, age 85, in Gräfelfing, Bavaria, ). Fritz Rasp appeared in 118 films and TV shows, among them, 1976 Dorothea Merz (TV Movie), 1975 Gestern gelesen (TV Series), 1975 Gold im Hirn, 1971 Der Kommissar (TV Series), 1969 Die Verspätung (TV Movie), 1965 Praetorius, 1964/II Eurydike (TV Movie), 1963 Maria Stuart (TV Movie), 1962 Secret of the Red Orchid, 1960 The Red Circle, 1959 Face of the Frog, 1956 Oberst Chabert (TV Movie), 1955 The Cornet, 1952 Haus des Lebens 1943 Paracelsus, 1939 Frau im Strom, 1937 The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1934 Charley's Aunt, 1933 The Judas of Tyrol, 1932 The Sorceror, 1931 The 3 Penny Opera, 1930 The Dreyfus Case, 1929 Woman in the Moon, 1929 Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929 Der Hund von Baskerville, 1928 Docks of Hamburg, 1928 Spies, 1928 The Prince of Rogues, 1927 The Last Waltz, 1927 Metropolis, 1926 Superfluous People, 1925 Comedians, 1924 Arabella, 1923 Man by the Roadside, 1922 Youth.

Vera Pawlowa ... Aunt Frieda (b. unknown—d. unknown). Verya Pawlowa appeared in 4 films including 1930 The Ring of the Empress, 1929 Diary of a Lost Girl, 1926 Superfluous People, 1924 Die Macht der Finsternis.

From World Film Directors Vol. I (1890-1945). Editor John Wakeman. The H. W. Wilson Company, NY, 1987 Released at the end of the war, Pabst directed a Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—4 season of plays in Prague, including two controversial the glum realism that had emerged in painting as a works by Franz Wedekind. His stage productions at the reflection of a national mood of disillusionment. Reacting time are said to have been in the Expressionist style then against the Expressionists romantic probing into the depths dominant in Germany. In 1920 he became artistic director of the human psyche, the artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit of a Vienna theatre, the Neuen Wiener Bühne, where he limited themselves to a resigned scrutiny of what people staged avant-garde plays by Sternheim and Georg Kaiser did to each other in visible and material terms, refusing among others. It was the German cinematographer and film speculation about why. “What need is there for romantic pioneer Carl Froelich who brought Pabst into the cinema. treatment?” Pabst asked once. “Real life is already far too When Froelich formed his own production company, he romantic, too disturbing.”… gave Pabst an acting role in his first movie Im Banne der But in 1925 the film’s unblinking portrayal of Kralle (1921), then took him on as assistant director and squalor and depravity was startling. In spite of the scenarist of Der Taugenichts (1922) and Luise Millerin wholesale mutilations imposed by the censors of various (1922). countries, it was a major international success, establishing Pabst’s first film as a director followed in 1923, Pabst as a significant figure in world cinema, and in Der Schatz (The Treasure)….Der Schatz did poorly at the particular as a brilliant director of women…. box office and Pabst’s next assignment, secured for him by In the course of his career Pabst became involved Froelich, was a routine commercial vehicle for the popular in an assortment of political and cultural movements, but actress Henny Porten, Gräfin Donelli (Countess Donelli, his deepest concern as a filmmaker was always the 1924). It was made very quickly and cheaply, but enjoyed revelation through visual images of human character. He great popularity and commercial success. Its producers, was greatly interested in psychology and psychoanalysis…. Maxim Films, urged Pabst to make other similar Ever since he had staged Wedekind’s play Erdgeist entertainments, but he had no wish to settle into a rut as a in Prague just after the war, he had wanted to film it and its commercial director, and was looking for a story that companion piece, Die Büchse der Pandora. In 1928 he saw would allow him to a couple of Paramount express his developing movies featuring a young social consciousness. He starlet named Louise found it in Die feudlose Brooks and recognized in Gasse (The Joyless her the combination of Street), a controversial intelligence and intuition, novel by the Viennese innocence and eroticism, journalist Hugo Bettauer, that he saw in Wedekind’s and in due course also Lulu. As it happenedd, she found backers for what had just been refused a developed into an salary increase by extremely ambitious Paramount and at once project. accepted Pabst’s offer. “In Bettauer’s novel, ,” she later recalled, originally a serial, is a “I stepped to the station portrait of Viennese platform to meet Mr. Pabst society in the postwar and became an actress,,,,It period of inflation, which was just as if Mr Pabst had brought an accelerating breakdown in economic, social and sat in on my whole life and career and knew exactly where moral values. Pabst engaged Willi Haas to write the script I needed assurance and protection.” Discussing Pabst’s and as his photographer, signing Werner directorial technique, she said, “it was the stimulus that Krauss and as his stars. He also selected concerned him. If he got that right, the actor’s emotional Valeska Gert, a popular cabaret entertainer, to play the reaction would be like life itself….by some magic he madam of a brothel, and agreed to pay the then outrageous would saturate me with one clear emotion and turn me sum of $4,000 for the services of an almost unknown yong loose.” actress named , whose promise he had Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1928) recognized in Mauritz Stiller’s The Saga of Gösta was drawn by Ladilaus Vajda from Wedekind’s two Lulu Berling…. plays (which also inspired Alban Berg’s great opera Lulu). For the most part, The Joyless Street eschews In his demimondaine Lulu, Wedekind created a Expressionist symbolism and indeed it has been recognized “personification of primitive sexuality” who uses up and as an important contribution to a very different destroys the men that love her until she meets an even more movement—the so-called “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New destructive sexual monster than herself, Jack the Ripper. Objectivity). The term had been coined in 1924 to define Where Berg in his opera heightened the theatricality of the Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—5 plays, Pabst and his scenarist subdued them to a more Gert). Escaping in the midst of a rebellion, Thymiane subtle and cinematic naturalism. However, Pabst does not winds up in a brothel. There are two conclusions to the hesitate to use Expressionist devices when they suit his story: one in which Thymiane, rejecting spurious purpose—especially towards the end of the film, as in the respectability, herself becomes the madam of a brothel, and extreme chiaroscuro of the floating casino, or the another, substituted by Pabst to secure the film’s release in disturbing psychological details picked out by the camera Germany, in which she marries the old Count Osdorff but as Jack is briefly distracted from his need to kill by Lulu’s retains her courage and honesty. irresistible sexuality. Freddy Buache has described Thymiane’s initial Other scenes seem closer to Impressionism, like seduction in the brothel as “one of the purest, most the sequence in which Lulu takes part in a cabaret. Lotte iridescent, and the most ineffably magnificent in the Eisner wrote of this that “nobody has ever equaled Pabst’s cinema’s collection of erotica.” Even more directly than in portrayal of the backstage fever on the opening night of a Pandora, Pabst contrasts the basic innocence and honesty big show, the hurrying and scurrying between scene of his “lost girl” with the hypocrisy and decadence of changes…the rivalry, complacency, and humour, the bourgeois society, though Kracauer and others complained bewildering bustle of stage-hands and electricians—a that he does not take his social criticism far enough and stupendous whirl of artistic aspiration, colourful detail, and instead “elaborated on the decadence itself.” There is little a facile eroticism ….Lulu appears like some pagan idol, of the Expressionist virtuosity or atmospheric richness of tempting, glittering with spangles, feathers and frills, Pandora in this film, which is characterized by an almost against a wavering, out-of-focus background.” documentary restraint and a new concern for stylistic unity. Pandora was cruelly mutilated by the censors, but By this time, the movies were becoming talkies. it was only partly for this reason that contemporary Pabst said some years later that he remained “convinced reviewers greeted it so coolly. Some were shocked, others that in the cinema, the text counts for little. What counts is regretted Pabst’s apparent retreat from political the image.” He nevertheless recognized that sound could engagement; many concluded that “Lulu is inconceivable not be ignored and in 1929 went to London to study the without the words that Wedekind made her speak.” More new production methods. He reached the conclusion that recently—with different the early talkies he saw there preconceptions and with merely exploited sound as a something like a complete novelty instead of recognizing print to study-critics have it as an addition to the recognized “the miracle of filmmaker’s vocabulary. Louie Brooks” and the Returning to Germany dimensions of Pabst’s early in 1930, he began work achievement, marred though on his own first , it is by a lack of stylistic , adapted by unity. Lee Atwell wrote that Ladislaus Vajda and P. M. “Pabst’s film reincarnates Lampel from Ernst Lulu as a modern myth, Pabst Johannsen’s anti-war novel sees her as a dangerously free Vier von der Infantrie…. and alluring innocent, without any notion of sin in the Though he had long been regarded as a realist Christian sense…a liberated figure of pure untrammeled director, it was in this grim and powerful film that Pabst feminine desire.” The movie has been compared with Carl achieved for the first time the goals of the “New Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc “for the intense, intimate Objectivity,” with none or few of the concessions to way it uses the camera to watch the processes of thoughts picturesqueness and sentimentality that marred other war and feelings through close sots of the face.” films of the period (as well as many of his own earlier In 1929 Pabst co-directed with Die pictures). It was released in May 1930 at a time when Weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü (The White Hell of Piz Palü). Germany was already gearing itself for another great war, Starring the young , it proved one of the and Pabst’s insistence on the futility and dreary monotony most successful of Fanck’s exciting “mountain films.” The of militarism was not welcomed by most German critics, same year Pabst returned to his own concerns in Das though the movie was greatly admired in Britain and Tagebich einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl), based on France. a best seller by Margarethe Böhme. Undeterred by the …Like René Clair in his first sound films, Pabst reception given to Pandora, he starred Louise Brooks in reduces dialogue to a minimum, concentrating instead on another study of a sexually generous girl. She plays gesture and image…. Thymiane, a pharmacist’s daughter made pregnant by his Returning to the style of Westfront, Pabst made one wicked assistant (Fritz Rasp) and incarcerated for this sin of his finest films in Kameradeschaft (Comradeship, 1931). in a reform school run by a voyeur and a sadist (Valeska Set in the immediate postwar period, it is based on an Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—6 incident that actually occurred in 1906, when German charm that nobody I know can resist, an extraordinary miners crosses the border to help rescue French miners power of seduction, the demon of intelligence in his look trapped underground in a disaster at Courriéres. The theme and a certain fullness and direct humanity that pierces the lent itself to Pabst’s humanistic distaste for the growing soul.” nationalism of the 1930s, and the film was organized in a Franco-German coproduction, with French and German From Lulu in Hollywood, Expanded Edition. Louise actors speaking their own languages throughout…. Brooks. Introduction by Kenneth Tynan. University of Kammeradeschaft has been recognized as a Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2000. masterpiece of fictional documentary and was an important influence on such British directors as Basil Wright and From the Introduction Humphrey Jennings. In France, it brought Pabst the Legion of Honor. In Germany, however, the film was condemned . . . When she got back to Paris, Pabst called her from by the reactionary press as unpatriotic and it failed at the Berlin. Prix de Beauté, he said, was postponed; instead, she box office. Finally disillusioned, Pabst went to France. would star under his direction in The Diary of a Lost Girl, None of Pabst’s later films equaled the major at precisely half her present salary [a thousand dollars a achievements of his first German period, but some are of week]. As submissive as ever to her tutor, she arrived in considerable merit…. Berlin aboard the next train. Lovingly photographed by Sepp Allgeier, Brooks Pabst’s reputation has never recovered from the in Lost Girl is less flamboyant but not less haunting than fact that he elected to spend the war years in Austria and she is in Pandora’s Box. The traffic in movie actors Germany. According to his wife, he had in fact intended to traditionally moved westward, from Europe to Hollywood, emigrate to the United States, but at the last moment was where their national characteristics were sedulously trapped in Europe by a traveling accident. There is exploited. Brooks, who was among the few to make the evidence to support this claim, but eastbound trip, became in her films he was also the only great German with Pabst completely cineaste of the prewar period to Europeanized. To be more exact: in make films under the Nazis, and the context that Pabst prepared for this has been found harder to her, Brooks’ American brashness justify…. took on an awareness of transience After the war, Pabst and mortality. The theme of Lost remained for a time in Austria. Girl is the corruption of a minor— Der Prozess (The Trial, 1947) is not by sexuality but by an set in nineteenth-century Hungary authoritarian society that condemns and centers on a lawyer famous sexuality. (Pabst must surely have for his defense of Jews persecuted read Wilhelm Reich, the Freudian during a wave of anti-Semitic Marxist, whose theories about the hysteria. Like Paracelsus, it has relationship between sexual and been much praised for its political repression were hotly cinematic qualities (which brought Pabst the award as best debated in Berlin at the time.) It is the same society that director at Venice in 1948), but rancorously attacked on condemns Lulu. In fact, “The Education of Lulu” would ideological grounds. One French reviewer remarked that make an apt alternative title for Lost Girl, whose heroine Pabst “defends the Jews…but ten years too late.” It should emerges from her travails ideally equipped for the leading be said that he had been anxious to make a movie on this role in Pandora’s Box. Her name is Thymiane Henning, theme as early as 1933, but had been then unable to obtain and she is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a prosperous French backing for the project…. pharmacist. In the early sequences, Brooks plays her shy said in 1963 that Pabst “knows how to and faunlike, peering wide-eyed at a predatory world. She create a strange world, whose elements are borrowed from is seduced and impregnated by her father’s libidinous daily life. Beyond this precious gift, he knows better than young assistant. As soon as her condition is discovered, the anyone else, how to direct actors. His characters emerge double standard swings into action. The assistant retains his like his own children, created from elements of his own job, but, to save the family from dishonor, Thymiane’s heart and mind.” baby is farmed out to a wet nurse, and she herself is …Louise Brooks described her mentor as “a short consigned to a home for delinquent girls, run by a bald and man, broad-shouldered and thick-chested, looking heavy ghoulish superintendent and his sadistic wife. and willful in repose. But in action his legs carried him on Life in the reformatory us strictly regimented; the wings which matched the swiftness of his mind.” inmates exercise to the beat of a drum and eat to the Alexandre Arnoux said that he possessed “a Viennese tapping of a metronome. At length Thymiane escapes from Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—7 this archetypal hellhole (precursor of many such madam of a whorehouse. The German distributors, institutions in subsequent movies, e.g. Mädchen in however, refused to countenance such a radical Uniform) and goes to reclaim her baby, only to find that the denouement, and Pabst was forced to capitulate. The result child has died. Broke and homeless, she meets a street is a flawed masterpiece, with a shining central performance vendor who guides her to an address where food and that even the closing, compromised sequences cannot dim. shelter will be hers for the asking. Predictably, it turns out Brooks has written that during the making of the film she to be a brothel; far less predictably, even shockingly, Pabst spent all of her off-duty hours with rich revelers of whom presents it as a place where Thymiane is not degraded but Pabst disapproved. On the last day of shooting, “he decided liberated. In the whorehouse she blossoms, becoming a fille to let me have it.” Her friends, he said, were preventing her de joie in the literal sense of the phrase. Unlike almost any from becoming a serious actress, and sooner or later they other actress in a similar situation, Brooks neither resorts to would discard her like an old toy. “Your life is exactly like pathos nor suggests that there is anything immoral in the Lulu’s, and you will end the same way,” he warned her. pleasure she derives from her new profession. As in The passage of time convinced her that Pabst had a valid Pandora, she lives for the moment, with radiant physical point. “Lulu’s story,” she told a journalist, “is as near as abandon. Present love, even for sale, hath present laughter, you’ll get to mine.” and what’s to come is not only unsure but irrelevant. I agree with Freddy Buache when he says of Brooks’s from Louise Brook’s interview in Kevin Brownlow, The performances with Pabst that they celebrated “the victory Parade’s Gone By... of innocence and amour-fou over the debilitating wisdom imposed on society by the Church, the Fatherland, and the You know what makes an actor great to work with? Family.” One of her more outré clients can achieve orgasm only by watching her beat a drum. This ironic echo of life Timing. You don’t have to feel anything. It’s like dancing in the reform school is used by Pabst to imply that sexual with a perfect dancing partner. Osgood Perkins would give prohibition breeds sexual aberration. (Even more you a line so that you would react perfectly. It was ironically, the sequence has been censored out of most of timing—because emotion means nothing. the existing prints of the movie.) Brooks is at her best—a Look at Adolphe Menjou. He never felt anything. He happy animal in skintight satin— in a party scene at a night used to say, “Now I do Lubitsch number one,” “Now I do club, where she offers herself as first prize in a raffle. Lubitsch number two.” And that’s exactly what he did. “Pabst wanted realism, so we all had to drink real drinks,” You felt nothing, working with him, and yet to see him on she said later. “I played the whole scene stewed on hot, the screen—he was a great actor. sweet German champagne.” Hereabouts, unfortunately, the film begins to shed A director works fast who knows everything ahead of time. its effrontery and to pay lip service to conventional values. He sees the picture finished, whole, cut, titled. Pabst would Thymiane catches sight of her father across the dance floor; take one shot, and—that was it. I remember I was going to instead of reacting with defiance—after all, he threw her do my famous Follies-girl walk across the stage in the out of his house—she looks stricken with guilt, like the theater scene of Pandora’s Box. I’d planned it all out. I outcast daughter of sentimental fiction. In her absence, took four steps on stage and Pabst said “Cut.” That was the Papa has married his housekeeper, by whom he has two end of it. I had given him all he wanted. children. When he dies, shortly after the nightclub confrontation, he leaves his considerable wealth to When I worked in night clubs, Thymiane. Nobly, she gives it all to his penniless widow, and in the theater, I knew all so that the latter’s offspring “won’t have to live the same the real gangsters. Men like kind of life that I have.” Thereby redeemed, the former Capone. They were the most whore soon becomes the wife of an elderly aristocrat. disgusting, idiotic boors. But, Revisiting the reform school, of which she has now been oddly enough, they had one appointed a trustee, she excoriates the staff for its self- great talent. During righteous cruelties. “A little more kindness, her husband Prohibition, they owned a lot adds, “and no one in the world would ever be lost.” Thus of nightclubs and they would lamely, the movie ends. hire people for these clubs that “Pabst seemed to lose interest,” Brooks told an nobody else would have. A interviewer some years afterward. “He more or less said, girl like Helen Morgan, for ‘I’m tired of this picture,’ and he gave it a soft ending.” His instance; nobody wanted her. first, and much tougher, intention had been to demonstrate She had a delicate little voice, she had very long legs, she that humanitarianism alone could never solve society’s had a large bosom, which wasn’t fashionable then; she problems. He wanted Thymiane to show her contempt for wasn’t very animated, and she sat on the piano and her husband’s liberal platitudes by setting herself up as the wouldn’t use a microphone. The gangsters loved her. They Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—8 put her in a night club called The Backstage, and all of a A Big Swallow consists of only three shots: the sudden Zigfield “discovered” her. approaching, protesting man; the photographer and his portrait camera as both are seen toppling into blackness; Wallace Beery used to scheme all day to figure out ways to and third, the swallower backing off. According to get my back to camera in two-shots. Billy Wellman said to Williamson, who responded to requests for an account of me, “Don’t let him do that to you.” I said, “I don’t give a how he managed to achieve the effect, the middle scene damn what he does. You’re the director. If you don’t want was made some time after the shots of the advancing and him to back me up, you tell him.” The result was that he’d retreating subject. The second scene, which had been shot have to take close-ups of me to get my face in the pictures. last, was only put in its place when the negatives were So I’d be in a close-up while Wally would be in a two- prepared for making positive prints. Thus Williamson, by shot! 1901, had discovered the principle of film editing, had Looking through an old dictionary with the flyleaves created filmic time and had brought to the medium its pasted with quotes from Goethe, I came upon this one: earliest full-frame close-ups. “The novel [film] is a subjective epic composition in which A decade later, David Wark Griffith believed that the author begs leave to treat the world according to his he had invented the close-up. And film editing and the point of view. It is only a question, therefore, whether he moving camera and even restrained acting. Griffith staked has a point of view. The rest will take care of itself.” out his claim to the “invention” of all these basic elements of cinematic art by taking out an ad in the New York Dramatic Mirror of December 3, 1913. And such is the power of the printed word, and so rarely have pre-1913, non-Griffith films figured in preserved study collections, that too many historians have believed Griffith’s preposterous claim. In considering the effectiveness of the both in the past and in present-day reexamination, one can think of some great films deficient or even totally lacking in good cutting, in photographic quality, in lighting, in story construction; in short, lacking nearly every device known to cinema, save only one: the close-up. Multiple exposures, dissolves, wipes, fades, crosscutting—all of these might never have come to the film, and without them but with the close-up alone, it is possible to think of the movies reaching the astonishing degree of emotional impact they did. For if the technological achievements of photography and the From Seductive Cinema. James Card. University of intermittent movements of cameras and projectors were Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, 1995. able to give the illusion of life to the screen, it was the close-up that gave the medium its soul. A mysterious soul Britain’s most important contributor to filmmaking exemplified by the shimmering images of a Greta Garbo, was unquestionably James Williamson, who stumbled on Clara Bow, Asta Nielsen or Louise Brooks. two of the most basic essentials of creative cinema: editing I will even go so far as to say that there has never and the close-up. Williamson’s twin discoveries happened been a great film without close-ups. In fact, a great film in 1901 in the film he called A Big Swallow. In it he has a was never made until close-ups came into general use. All reluctant still-camera subject approaching nearer and that the silent film contributed, apart from what it borrowed nearer to the camera until he appears to swallow the from the theatre (settings, movement and arrangement of camera and photographer, munching both as he retreats the players), from the graphic arts (composition, spatial from the scene. concepts, lighting) and from music (rhythmic cutting), is Williamson’s trick was outstandingly popular but embodied in the close-up. regarded by competing cameramen of the time as being too In the close-up the motion picture is in its own difficult technically for the imitation, which was the usual world. Only in the close-up can the cinema practice the procedure that resulted in the appearance of a successful utter concentration, employ the power of emphasis, the picture. Without the follow-focus devices of modern artistry of selection and the magic of revelation, strengths cameras, it was necessary to construct a bellows extension that are all unique to the medium. to achieve his famous close-up that becomes ever larger It is in the close-up that the film player enters a until the whole screen is filled only with the subject’s realm of acting undreamed of in the whole tradition of mouth. theatre. The pitiless demands of the enormously magnified Pabst—DIARY OF A LOST GIRL—9 image shattered the hopes of many of the theatre’s best I wanted a new type. I hired Louise Brooks because she’s people when they turned to film. In a large measure it was so very sure of herself, she’s very analytical, she’s very the overpowering intimacy of the close-up that turned film feminine–but she’s damn good and sure she’s going to do watchers into something approaching drug addicts as they what she wants to do. I could use her today [1967]. She flowed, ninety million of them every week, to the movies was way ahead of her time. And she’s a rebel. I like her, of North America during the greatest years of the silent you know. I like rebels. I like people you can look at and drama. remember who they are. Not that all other factors of filmic construction —Howard Hawks were unimportant, but they had less to do with the effectiveness of the silent film than did the close-up. I have a gift for enraging people. Cutting, continuity and lighting all modified the motion — Louise Brooks picture but the close-up characterized it. Carl Dreyer, the famous Danish director, was fully aware of this unique power. He wrote: “Nothing in the I never try to feel sexy. . . .The people who try hardest to world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one be sexy only fool other fools. —Louise Brooks can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the Imagine Pabst choosing Louise Brooks expression of a sensitive face under for Lulu when he could have had me! the mysterious power of inspiration. —Marlene Dietrich To see it animated from inside and turning into poetry.” I just didn’t fit into the Hollywood scheme at all. I was neither a fluffy Lines from and about Louise heroine, nor a wicked vamp, nor a Brooks woman of the world. I just didn’t fit into any category. I just didn’t interest them Louise Brooks is the only woman because I couldn’t be typed. . . . who had the ability to transfigure —Louise Brooks whatever film into a masterpiece….Louise is the perfect In writing the history of a life, I believe apparition, the dream woman, the absolutely that the reader cannot being without whom the cinema understand the character and deeds of would be a poor thing. She is much the subject unless he is given an more than a myth, she is a magical understanding of that person’s sexual presence, a real phantom, the loves and hates and conflicts. It is the magnetism of the cinema. only way the reader can make sense out —Ado Kyrou, French critic of innumerable apparently senseless actions. . . .I too am unwilling to write Those who have seen her can never the sexual truth that would make my life forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence….As worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt. That is soon as she takes the screen, fiction disappears along with why I will never write my memoirs. —Louise Brooks art, and one has the impression of being present at a ˆ documentary. The camera seems to have caught her by surprise, without her knowledge. She is the intelligence of If I ever bore you it’ll be with a knife. —Louise Brooks the cinematographic process, the perfect incarnation of that which is photogenic, she embodies all that the cinema How I have existed fills me with horror. For I failed in rediscovered in its last years of silence: coplete naturalness everything–spelling, arithmetic, riding, swimming, tennis, and complete simplicity. Her art is so pure that it becomes golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. invisible. . . .I do not know of a greater tragedienne of the Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual screen. … There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There escape of “not trying.” I tried with all my heart. is only Louise Brooks! —Louise Brooks —Henri Langlois, director of the Cinémathèque Française

Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—10

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS 31 Sept 8 Mayo, Petrified Forest, 82 min, 1936 Sept 15 Montgomery, Lady in the Lake, 103 min, 1946 Sept 22 Chabrol, Le Beau Serge. 99 min, 1958 Sept 29 Tarkovsky, Ivan’s Childhood, 95 min, 1962 Oct 6 Friedken, The French Connection, 104 min 1971 Oct 13 Kasdan, Body Heat, 113 min, 1981 Oct 20 Costa-Gavras, Missing, 122 min, 1982 Oct 27 Joffé, The Mission, 125 min, 1986 Nov 3 Nair, Mississippi Masala, 117 min, 1991 Nov 10 Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke, 134 min 1997 Nov 17 Suleiman, The Time That Remains, 105 min, 2009 Nov 24 Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, 122 min, 2009 Dec 1 Tarr, The Turin Horse 143 min 2011 Dec 8 Powell and Pressburger, A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven, 104 min. 1946

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