Diary of a Lost Girl

(1929) dir G.W. Pabst w/Louise Brooks, André Roanne [112 min; DCP]

The second and final collaboration of actress Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is a provocative adaptation of Margarethe Böhme's notorious novel, in which the naive daughter of a middle-class pharmacist is seduced by her father's assistant, only to be disowned and sent to a repressive home for wayward girls. She escapes, searches for her child, and ends up in a high-class brothel, only to turn the tables on the society which had abused her. It's another tour-de-force performance by Brooks, whom silent film historian Kevin Brownlow calls an "actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality and a beauty unparalleled in screen history." – Thomas Gladysz