Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) represents the second collaboration between one Germany's great pre-war directors, G. W. Pabst, and one the cinema's most enduring silent film stars, Louise Brooks. In this once censored film, Brooks plays Thymian, a teenage girl forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution.
Together with Pandora’s Box (1929) - in which Brooks played Lulu, this second collaboration confirms Pabst’s artistry as one of the great directors of the silent period as well as Brooks' stature as an “actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality and a beauty unparalleled in screen history” - so wrote future Academy Award winner Kevin Brownlow in his classic 1968 book, The Parade’s Gone By.
The parallels between Thymian and Lulu, between Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora's Box, are many.
Diary of a Lost Girl will be shown on Thursday, August 26 at 7:30pm at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York as part of its “Anything But Silent: Classics from the Silent Age” series.
According to the Cinema Arts Centre description of the event, “Brooks, in a delicate, restrained performance, plays the naive daughter of a prosperous pharmacist. Shy and fawnlike, this wide-eyed innocent is seduced and made pregnant by her father’s young assistant. To preserve bourgeois family honor, she is sent to a repressive reform school from which she eventually escapes. Penniless and homeless, she is directed to a brothel, where she becomes liberated and lives for the moment with radiant, absolute, physical abandon.”
Diary of a Lost Girl is based on a controversial and bestselling book of the same name first published in Germany in 1905. Though little known today, the book was a literary sensation at the beginning of the 20th century and is considered one of the bestselling books of its time. The original English language translation of the book has recently been brought back into print.
Live musical accompaniment for this special event will be provided by Ben Model on the Cinema Arts Centre’s Miditzer Theater Organ. More about the Ben Model can be found at http://www.silentfilmmusic.com/
More info: The 1929 Louise Brooks film, Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown on Thursday, August 26 at 7:30pm at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York. Admission is $9 Members / $13 Public. Additional details at http://www.cinemaartscentre.org/silent.html#DIARY
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 fan club devoted to the legendary 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.
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