A Girl in Every Port, the 1928 Howard Hawks directed film starring Louise Brooks, Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong, will screen at the British Film Institute on January 2 and January 7, 2011.
Among Brooks’ surviving silent films, it is seldom screened - despite the fact it has a large reputation. The film will be shown with live piano accompaniment, and is part of a multi-film Hawks retrospective taking place at the BFI. The film is described as "Perhaps the most significant of Howard Hawks' silent films."
Hawks (1896 – 1977) was an American director, producer and screenwriter best known for his work during the sound era. His films include such classics as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).
A Girl in Every Porttells the story of two sailors and their adventures with various women in various ports of call. Brooks, under contract to Paramount, was loaned to Fox for the film. Brooks was cast as a vamp, a circus artiste known as Marie (Mam’selle Godiva), the girl from Marseille, France who as part of her act dives into a small pool of water. McLaglen and Armstrong, each suitors, offer a towel and more. 'Mlle Godiva' handles each with Lulu-like aplomb.
Significantly, Brooks stands as the what might be the first “Hawksian woman.” The BFI website notes, "History ranks this as the most significant of Hawks' silent films, because it seemingly persuaded G.W. Pabst to ask for Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box.”
Or did it?
Brooks herself stated as much in filmed interviews; and earlier, James Card, the Director of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York made the claim in print. But how did they know? Did Pabst say so? Did Pabst tell Brooks? Or did they only assume so because the release date of A Girl in Every Port preceded Pandora’s Box, and because Brooks plays a similar character?
It’s an oft repeated claim - that Pabst cast Brooks in Pandora's Box after having seen her in A Girl in Every Port. Looking at a chronological list of the actresses’ films, this assumption makes sense.Hawks' film (in which Brooks plays a temptress, not unlike Lulu) was released in the United States in February 1928. In Germany, Pabst was attempting to cast Lulu in the Spring and early Summer of the same year.
The claim that Pabst chose Brooks after having seen her in A Girl in Every Port was made by James Card in his 1956 article "Out of Pandora’s Box: Louise Brooks on G. W. Pabst." And, it was repeated by Brooks herself in filmed interviews in the 1970's.
However, as reviews show, Blaue jungens, blonde Madchen (the German title for A Girl in Every Port) was not shown in Berlin until December 1928, after production on Pandora's Box was finished. Could Pabst have seen the Hawks' film prior to its German release?
Or, might Pabst have noticed Brooks in one of her earlier films such as Die Braut am Scheidewege (Just Another Blonde) or Ein Frack Ein Claque Ein Madel (Evening Clothes) - each of which was shown in Berlin and received significant coverage prior to Pabst’s decision to cast Brooks was made?
Whatever the answer, A Girl in Every Port was an entertaining film then and now. When A Girl in Every Port premiered on February 18, 1928 at the Roxy Theater in New York City, it received good reviews and played to a packed house. Fox claimed the film set a “New House Record – and a World Record – with Daily Receipts on February 22nd of $29,463.” With admission being less than a dollar per person, that is a lot of money for a single day.
Writing in Cahiers du Cinéma in January 1963, the French film archivist Henri Langlois stated “It seems that A Girl in Every Port was the revelation of the Hawks season at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For New York audiences of 1962, Louise Brooks suddenly acquired that ‘Face of the century’ aura she had had, many years ago, for spectators at the Cinema des Ursulines. . . . That is why Blaise Cendrars confided a few years ago that he thought A Girl in Every Port definitely marked the first appearance of contemporary cinema. To the Paris of 1928, which was rejecting expressionism, A Girl in Every Port was a film conceived in the present, achieving an identity of its own by repudiating the past.”
More info: Additional details about the BFI screenings can be found on the British Film Institute website at http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/january_seasons/howard_hawks/a_girl_in_every_port
Thomas Gladysz is a longtime fan of Louise Brooks, so much so that in 1995 he founded the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and international fan club devoted to the silent film star. Gladysz has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television, and introduced her films around the country. Recently, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl. Gladysz will speak about his new book at the Village Voice Bookshop in Paris on January 13, 2011. This author talk will be followed by a screening of the film at the nearby Action Cinema.
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