Returning to America after PANDORA’S BOX/’29 in Germany, just in time to refuse sound reshoots on THE CANARY MURDER CASE/’29, effectively ending her A-list Hollywood career, Louise Brooks soon sailed back to director G.W. Pabst in Berlin for this followup. Facing censorship & the Talkie Revolution, DIARY repeated PANDORA’S scandale but not its succès de, dropping so much footage along the way it’s always seemed an 80 minute afterthought to the earlier film. Now, triumphantly restored to its original two-hour length in a recent German restoration (out on KINO), it still seems an afterthought, but now a worthwhile one. Most of the difference from its authors: PANDORA’S Frank Wedekind unsettling provocateur; DIARY’S Margarete Böhme agile provocateur. Here, Brooks, who may never have looked quite so stunning, falls and falls as passive victim (pregnant teen to reformatory to brothel), while in BOX she’s active victim, goading lovers toward murder . . . even her own. The tone now less perverse, the presentation less expressionistic. Though Pabst can still move in and out of stylistic extremes with the deftness of an integrated musical moving characters in and out of show tunes. Unmissable in this refined edition, Brooks made one more film abroad before returning to the States for a few minor roles, then salesgirl at Saks Fifth Avenue, finally landing as the cinematic sage of Rochester, New York. What a beauty, what a brain, what a bitch of a life.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The obvious choice is PANDORA’S BOX. But as one silent German Expressionist film goes a long way, why not try Brooks at her Hollywood peak in William Wellman’s BEGGARS OF LIFE. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/beggars-of-life-1928.html
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