Ten years ago, Bristol Silent’s – a local film group in the UK – hosted its first ever event, a double bill featuring Louise Brooks.
To mark the anniversary, the Bristol film group in conjunction with the Bristol Festival of Ideas and Arnolfini (a contemporary arts organization located in the English city) is presenting a special evening celebrating the life and work of Louise Brooks. It’s an event no British fan of the actress will want to miss.
Brooks has become a worldwide icon, with her legacy shaped by her mesmerizing work in a handful of American and European films made in the late twenties. “Celebrating Louise Brooks” features one of those works, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). It is the second of two German films made under the direction of G.W. Pabst. The other, Pandora’s Box – with Brooks’ playing the part of Lulu – is considered one of the great films of the silent era. Diary, though not shown as often and not as highly regarded, may well be its equal.
According the Academy Award winning British film historian Kevin Brownlow, Diary confirmed Pabst as one of the great directors of the silent period and established Brooks as an “actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality and a beauty unparalleled in screen history.”
In the film, Brooks plays a teenage girl named Thymian who is seduced by her father’s assistant and gives birth to a child. When she refuses to marry, she is forced to give-up the baby and is sent to a reform school for wayward girls. From there, she escapes and turns to prostitution. The film, based on a controversial bestselling book by Margarete Bohme, was heavily censored when first released in 1929.
Diary will be shown with live piano accompaniment by John Sweeney. It will be preceded by Arena: Louise Brooks (1986), a superb British television documentary featuring interviews with Brooks in which she talks of her days in Paris and Berlin and her experiences in Hollywood. This 55-minute documentary, which aired shortly after Brooks’ death, is credited to Richard Leacock as director. It includes extracts from Brooks’ films.
Arena: Louise Brooks is very rarely shown and is not otherwise available on video or DVD. In fact, most fans of the actress don’t even know it exists. The chance to see it is reason enough to attend the Bristol Silent’s event.
For more info: “Celebrating Louise Brooks” is set to take place October 29th at the Arnolfini in Bristol, England. More information including ticket availability can be found at http://www.bristolsilents.org.uk/events.php?eventname=Celebrating-Louise-Brooks
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 San Francisco Public Libraryon November 14th (Louise Brooks’ birthday).
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