Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the Brazilian Magazines & Newspapers

The Louise Brooks Society blog is participating in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. This blogathon celebrates the contributions of Portuguese-speaking peoples and their descendants to world cinema. This post is the third of three related posts. More information on the Luso World Cinema Blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I would encourage everyone to check it out!

Before I post something about the bits and pieces I've found searching the internet, I want to mention that I recently came across a six part podcast all about today's topic - Louise Brooks and Brazil. This podcast, by Pedro Dantas, is titled "Louise Brooks, Garota Perdida" and dates to November 2021. Here is the series description in Portuguese: "Programa em homenagem ao legado artístico e cinematográfico de Louise Brooks (1906-1985), estrela do cinema mudo, ícone dos anos 1920 e mulher à frente de seu tempo (e do nosso tempo). Em 2021 se completam 115 anos de seu nascimento." And here it is in English translation: "Program in honor of the artistic and cinematographic legacy of Louise Brooks (1906-1985), silent film star, icon of the 1920s and woman ahead of her time (and our time). 2021 marks 115 years since her birth."

"Louise Brooks, Garota Perdida"

I don't speak Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese, so I cannot listen and understand. But if anyone does give it a listen, I would appreciate knowing your thoughts. BTW, the above mentioned series isn't the only Brazilian podcast I've come across about Brooks. Another, from ClickCiência, dates to january 2021 and is titled "Recepção da obra de Louise Brooks no Brasil é tema de pesquisa na UFSCar." In it, Tamara Carla dos Santos, a student in the Postgraduate Program in Image and Sound at the Federal University of São Carlos, talks about her research on the reception of the films of Louise Brooks in Brazil. Again, if anyone gives it a listen, I would appreciate knowing your thoughts. 

I am fortunate to have been able to dig into a few different Brazilian database archives and have acquired dozens and  dozens of newspaper and magazine clippings and advertisements about Louise Brooks and her films. My greatest find, a couplemof pieces about Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter, were covered in my previous post. 

I have too many to post here, so instead I will post some highlights. Before I begin, I would like to point readers of this blog to a page on the Louise Brooks Society website devoted to the actress' South American Magazine Covers. The actress appeared on at least four covers from Brazil, three from Cinearte, and once on A Scena Muda.Reader's can seen them there in beautiful color.

A Scena Muda was one of Brazil's most popular film magazines. They often ran two page spreads on news films, including most all of Brooks' paramount productions. Here is a typical two page spread on Beggars of Life, which in Brazil was titled Os Mendigos na Vida.

Cinearte was another popular fan magazine.  Like A Scena Muda, it too ran one and two page spreads on newly released films. Here is the feature they ran on The Canary Murder Case, which in Brazil was titled O Drama De Uma Noite.

When we think of Brooks' three European films, we usually think of them in a European context. We don't necessarily think that they played in Latin American -- at least not around the time of their release. However, at least two of them did. Pandora's Box played in Brazil in 1929 (months before it played in the United States), and Prix de beaute played in Brazil in 1930 (decades before it played in the United States). The earliest screening of Diary of a Lost Girl in Brazil which I have been able to document dates to August 1954. The film was shown three times at the Filmoteca do Museu de Arte Moderna. That puts it on par with the Louise Brooks' revival just beginning to percolate in France and Italy! And, that predates its first shown in the United States by more than two decades.

Here is a single page piece on Pandora's Box from a magazine called Frou-Frou. in Brazil, the film was called Caixa de Pandora.

Of the three, I might guess that Prix de beaute made the biggest splash. I have come across magazine features about the French production, was well as a good deal of newspaper coverage. In fact, one newspaper, Diario Carioca, from Rio De Janeiro, ran significant articles about the film six days in a row! Here is one example of those pieces, shown within the context of the entire newspaper page.

In my previous post, I displayed a newspaper advertisement for Prix de beaute. I'll close this blog post with another. Uniquely so, it notes that Louise Brooks would be wearing, or modeling, clothes designed by Patou. I don't think I have ever come across an ad for this film -- even French ads -- which mentioned Patou.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Louise Brooks and Brazil - when Pandora's Box was featured in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter

The Louise Brooks Society blog is participating in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. This blogathon celebrates the contributions of Portuguese-speaking peoples and their descendants to world cinema. This post is the second of three related posts. More information on the Luso World Cinema Blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I would encourage everyone to check it out!

I have been researching Louise Brooks for a long time, ever since I launched the Louise Brooks Society website back in 1995. Over those 29 years, I have come across all kinds of interesting, unusual, and even surprising material. This particular find, however, left me gobsmacked.

I found two articles focusing on Pandora's Box, the 1929 German-made, G.W. Pabst directed film starring Louise Brooks. It wasn't so much that I found two articles that were unknown to me - but where I found them. They appeared in the June 1930 issue of O Fan - the official newsletter of the Chaplin-Club. (More on this remarkable group below.) What astonished me was that something like a local film club printed a newsletter back then, and that copies survived to this day. And what's more, this group was based not in the United States or Europe, but in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

Here is the table of contents for the June 1930 issue, with Pandora's Box referred to under its Portuguese title, A Caixa de Pandora.

As can be seen above, one article on the film is by Octávio de Faria, and the other is by Annibal Nogueira Jr. Each were noted Brazilian writers. (Octavio de Faria was also the editor of O Fan.) The first article runs seven and a half-pages. It is subtitled -- "ensaaio para um estudo sobre G. W. Pabst" -- or "essay for a study on G. W. Pabst." Instead of posting images of each page of this  piece, I will instead LINK TO THE ARTICLE so that those who wish to read it may do so. 

The second article runs seven pages. Again, instead of posting images of this second article, I will instead LINK TO THE ARTICLE so those who wish to read it may do so.

The last entry on the table of contents pictured above is "Sessões do Chaplin-Club," a record of the group's sessions or meetings at which they viewed and likely discussed films. Did the Chaplin-Club have their own access to prints of the films they wrote about, or did they rely on theatrical screenings? It is hard to say. But, in announcing the publication of the two articles shown above, the prior issue of O Fan referred to a "special presentation" they had of A Caixa de Pandora.

If that is the case, WOW. If not, then the only public showing of A Caixa de Pandora in Rio de Janeiro prior to June 1930 that I haveso far  come across took place in December, 1929 at Rio's Primor theatre, which is pictured below in an earlier image from the 1920s.

This old theater may still stand. James N. Green's 2001 book, Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago Press), refers to the Primor as "a large old movie theatre in downtown Rio... [and] a popular place for anonymous sexual liaisons."

As well as the two articles, the sessões record in the June 1930 issue of O Fan contains a brief evaluation of A Caixa de Pandora by an author credited only as "A.C." (That author may be Almir Castro.)

 My rough, computer assisted translation from the Portuguese reads:

"A major film by Pabst. It is a drama begun in dark tones, charged, morbid. Typically Pabst, it's deeply imbued with his directorial temperament. They are five or six different and equally tragic scenes, which evolve around a young woman, leading to a progressive and almost unconscious fall.

Scenario is well built, few inter-titles, drawing from the artist everything he can give. Symbolism. Great staging, great ambience, great characters, great detail, great sensuality - obsessive sensuality. All of it is compressed, dense, compact ...

Pandora's Box ... and Louise Brooks."

Notably, this issue also contains a still from the film, which I have improved because the original scan was poor.

What was Chaplin-Club? Founded in 1928 by Octavio de Faria and three others, the Chaplin-Club was the first cine-club in Brazil; it's main objective was to study cinema as art rather than as a popular form of entertainment. It should be noted that though they revered Charlie Chaplin and took their name from the actor, the club's interests went beyond the comedian and his films. And, it should also be noted, the club's perspective looked beyond Hollywood and instead looked to ideas about film then percolating in Europe, especially in France, and to a lesser degree, the Soviet Union.

Since the group's founding, it issued O Fan as a means to spread its ideas. The group's newsletter, which ran between 1928 and 1930, marked the beginning of "serious" Brazilian film criticism. All together, I believe, there were nine issues. The first seven issues, which resemble a professional newsletter of today, ran between four and eight pages, while the last two, which looked like a less professional 'zine of today, ran approximately 100 pages. Check out the first issue (pictured below) as well as later issues of the publication starting HERE.

Unlike Cinearte, Brazil's leading film-fan magazine (which will be discussed in the next post), O Fan had no advertisements, printed few photographs, and seemingly had little interest in Hollywood and its stars. It newsletter was instead filled with serious, sometimes technical considerations of European and American silent films. It printed articles on directors such as Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, King Vidor, Buster Keaton, E. A. Dupont, D. W. Griffith, F. W. Murnau and G. W. Pabst. Below is a typical first page, featuring articles on Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch. Other issues critiqued films like City Lights, Fazil, Sunrise, The Patriot, Moulin Rouge, and Broadway Melody. There were also short write-ups of Erotikon, Variety, Piccadilly and other films.

Even with the emergence of sound films, the Chaplin-Club considered silent film the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. According to Maite Conde's 2018 book Foundational Films: Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil (University of California Press), the Brazilian group, "decried the talkies as attacking the purity of film's visual discourse, and, worse still, as taking the medium back to its popular origins in the theater.... O Fan knew that it was read by almost no one and that it had no influence in the future of film, but it was not troubled by this."

What film could achieve was an idea whose time had come. Just a couple of months after the two articles about Pandora's Box appeared in O Fan, another of Brooks' European films, the French made Prix de beaute (aka Miss Europa) opened in Rio at the Alhambra, where it proved to be a big hit. That film was one of Brooks' first sound films, but more than that, it is a film very much concerned with the visual depiction of sound.

Despite their belief that their group had little influence, the ideas put forth by the Chaplin-Club seeped into Brazil's film culture. The Chaplin-Club dissolved in 1930, and its members went on to be film critics, writers, and teachers whose followers and students would in turn go on to form their own film clubs, societies, and groups. When Orson Welles visited Brazil in the early 1940s, he met with members of the disbanded Chaplin-Club and even debated the use of sound and image in film. In the mid-1950s, important national institutions like the Brazilian Cinemateca, and later the Cinemateca of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, were founded. Both, in part, can trace their origins to the intellectual cinephilia seeded by the Chaplin-Club.

Interestingly,as well, in 1959, Enrique Scheiby, assistant curator of the Brazilian Cinemateca, visited the United States under the State Department's international educational exchange service. He visited for five months, to "study the American film industry." According to an August, 1959 article in a Brazilian newspaper, Correio do Parana, among the various places he visited was the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York -- and among the prominent stars he came into contact with were George Cukor, Otto Preminger, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson and .... Louise Brooks. (My research confirms that Scheiby dined with Brooks and James Card on May 14, 1959.) According to Carlos Roberto de Souza's A Cinemateca Brasileira e a preservação de filmes no Brasil, Scheiby was intent on meeting Brooks, "muse of silent cinema, who signed photographs for the select members of an informal club of Louise Brooks admirers, whose headquarters was the Cinematheque." For a time, one of those autographed photographs would hang in the meeting room of the Cinematheque.

Three years later, French film archivist Henri Langlois also visited Rochester, and was interviewed by Henry Clune of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. He confirmed Brazil's continuing affection for Brooks.

Some of the above material will be included in my forthcoming two volume work, Around the World with Louise Brooks, a transnational look at the career and films of the actress. It is due out later sometime in 2025, or so. For more interesting, unusual, and even surprising material, stay tuned to this blog. And consider subscribing. 

And be sure and tune-in tomorrow for another Louise Brooks Society installment in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. Tomorrow's post returns to Brazil to look how Louise Brooks & her films were seen in Brazilian magazines and newspapers.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the Portuguese-American Press

The Louise Brooks Society blog is participating in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. This blogathon celebrates the contributions of Portuguese-speaking peoples and their descendants to world cinema. This post is the first of three related posts. More information on the Luso World Cinema Blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I would encourage everyone to check it out!

In the United States, stories about the movies and film stars weren’t limited to the country’s mainstream, English language press. In fact, in the 1920s and 1930s, there were as many as a thousand non-English language publications in America. Most were newspapers, and most focused on the interests of their respective communities; however, a few of these ethnic and / or émigré publications acted akin to the mainstream press in reporting the general news of the day – albeit in German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Yiddish, or some other language -- including Portuguese.

Notably, this broader coverage occasionally included entertainment news along with bits about whichever movies were playing locally. And occasionally, this broader coverage put a spotlight on Louise Brooks. This entry in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon looks at Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the one Portuguese-language newspaper, Diario de Noticias.

New Bedford is a historic port city in Massachusetts. During the first half of the 19th century, it was one of the world's most important whaling ports. (The city even served as a setting in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick.) Later in that same century, immigrants from Portugal and its colonial possessions in the Atlantic — namely Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira — began settling in New Bedford and the surrounding area, attracted by jobs in the still active whaling industry.

Diario de Noticias (or Portuguese Daily News) was a Portuguese-language newspaper in New Bedford which served the area's Portuguese-language readers. During the silent film era, it covered the movies and ran advertisements for local screenings just like other local English-language papers. But interestingly in a different language.... and sometimes with a cultural twist.

In New Bedford, the Empire theater ran most every new Paramount film. The clipping and two newspaper advertisements above promote local screenings of Brooks' first two films. Notably, the titles of Brooks' films were translated, with The Street of Forgotten Men becoming A Rua dos Homens Esquecidos, and The American Venus becoming A Venus Americana. 

Translating the title of a film in order to make it more relatable to non English-language readers was something many ethnic newspapers practiced, but not always consistently.

More clippings from Diaro de Noticias. Onthe left,  Brooks is featured in a studio-supplied piece promoting A Social Celebrity, which here retains its English-language title in an article which has been translated from English. On the right are three film advertisements in which the Paramount films retain their original English-language titles: A Social Celebrity is advertised as an “interesting film.”  It’s the Old Army Game features “the beautiful actress Louise Brooks.” While The Show Off is described as a “magnificent film”.

Diario de Noticias returned to translating the titles of American films into Portuguese. Ama-O E Dexia-O is the Portuguese title of Love Em and Leave Em, the film showing at the Empire theatre on New Year’s Eve, 1926. Twinkletoes, starring Colleen Moore, followed on New Year’s Day. Just Another Blonde is titled in this Portuguese ad without an “e” -- and they even left off Brooks’ name!

Louise Brooks is pictured far left in the publicity still shown above; here, Diario de Noticias identifies the actress' 1927 film The City Gone Wild as A Cidade que Enlouqueceu, which literally translates as  the slightly different “The City That Went Crazy.” Unlike her other Paramount films, this screening was not held at the Empire, but instead was shown at the local Olympia theatre. Perhaps, distribution agreements had changed in New Bedford.

The City Gone Wild likely proved popular, because the film came back to New Bedford as The City Gone Wild six months later for a encore showing at the Orpheum at the same time that the then newly released 1928 Brooks' film, A Girl in Every Port, was showing at The State theater.

In the 1930's, Brooks film career went into decline. She was cast in lesser roles in lesser films which more often then not were poorly distributed. One of the last of Brooks' films to screen in New Bedford was God's Gift to Women (1931), a Warner Bros. production.

This Portuguese-language newspaper ad notes God’s Gift to Women is playing at the State (as O Presente de Deus Para as Mulheres) along with The Public Enemy (as O Inimigo Publico), another Warner Bros. film in which Brooks was cast but did not appear.

++++++

Compared to the the mainstream big city or even small town newspapers, accessing ethnic or émigré publications can be challenging. Many don't seem to be well archived or made available, and of those that are, many of them kept focused on the immediate concerns of their readers and left mainstream cultural coverage to others.

I did manage to access one other Portuguese-American newspaper, A Colonia Portuguesa, from Oakland, California. In August of 1931, this community newspaper ran this cluster of advertisements. It notes that on Wednesday and Thursday the local Premier theater would be showing another of Brooks lesser 1930's films,  It Pays to Advertise (1931), along with Utah Kid, a 1930 Western which starred Boris Karloff.

Some of the above material will be included in my forthcoming two volume work, Around the World with Louise Brooks, a transnational look at the career and films of the actress. It is due out later sometime in 2025, or so. For more interesting, unusual, and even surprising material, stay tuned to this blog. And consider subscribing. 

And be sure and tune-in tomorrow for another Louise Brooks Society installment in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. Tomorrow's post ventures to Brazil to look at the time when Pandora’s Box was featured in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter from Rio!

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, starring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1931

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, starring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1931. The film is a short comedy which centers on Windy Riley, a cocky blow-hard who attempts to revamp the publicity department of a Hollywood studio. The film was Louise Brooks’ first after returning from Europe, the first to feature her actual voice (Brooks’ earlier sound films, The Canary Murder Case and Prix de Beauté, had been dubbed), and her first and only short. More about the film can be found on the Louise Brooks Society website filmography page.

The film was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who was working under the name William B. Goodrich; a blacklist on the comedian's employment in Hollywood was still in effect. Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was promoted as a behind the scenes look at the movie capital. The film’s press sheet overstated its case when it proclaimed “One of the first pictures ever showing the interior of a sound stage and the actual operation of talking pictures. . . . The actual cameras, microphones, etc., used in picture production will be shown in some of the big scenes.”

At times, story details surrounding character Betty Grey (played by Brooks) curiously parallel Brooks’ own career. Near the beginning of the film, Grey is set to star in The Box Car Mystery, a title of which calls to mind Brooks’ role in Beggars of Life. Later, while at lunch at the Montmarte (a famous Los Angles café once frequented by Brooks and others in Hollywood), Riley boasts he was responsible for the successful advertising campaign mounted by Klux Soap. In real life, Brooks was among a handful of actress who regularly appeared in print ads for Lux Soap. And, at the end of the film, it is announced that Grey will wed the director The Box Car Mystery. A few years earlier, Brooks married Eddie Sutherland, who directed her in It’s the Old Army Game.

The film's few reviews were largely negative, and the film suffered from a lack of exhibitor interest. Consequently, few likely saw Windy Riley Goes Hollywood at the time of its release. Except for a three-month period in mid-1931 when it played in Toronto, there are few records of this short film having been shown in any large cities. What exhibition records have been found suggest the film was shown as program filler in mostly smaller markets.

 In the United States and Canada, the film was on a few occasions promoted under the title Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood, and once reviewed as Windy Riley Goes into Hollywood. Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Canada, The Philippines, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland).

Elsewhere, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was shown under the title The Gas Bag (United Kingdom, including England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) and as Windy Rileyová jde Hollywood (Czechoslovakia).

 SOME THINGS ABOUT THE FILM YOU MAY NOT KNOW:

-- Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, based on an original story by Ken Kling, was adapted from Kling’s comic strip Windy Riley. The New York cartoonist started the strip about a wisecracking braggart in 1928. At the time of the film's release, the strip ran in some 170 newspapers across the country.

-- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, depressed and still working under a pseudonym because he was under an industry blacklist, directed the film. Years later, Brooks told Kevin Brownlow, "He made no attempt to direct this picture. He sat in his chair like a man dead."

-- Dell Henderson started as an actor in 1908, and was a frequent associate of director D.W. Griffith, and less so, with producer Mack Sennett. Henderson also directed nearly 200 silent films between 1911 and 1928. In the late 1920s, he returned to acting and played important supporting roles in King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) and Show People (1928). The advent of sound stalled his career, and he was thereafter cast in small parts. In the 1930s, Henderson appeared as a comic foil for W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and The Three Stooges.

-- The group of dancers seen in Windy Riley Goes Hollywood were recruited from the chorus of George Olsen’s Culver City nightclub. Olsen was a popular bandleader and recording artist married to Ethel Shutta. Her brother Jack Shutta, a stage performer making his screen debut in the title role of Windy Riley, managed Olsen's nightclub. Along with Ethel Shutta and Louise Brooks, Olsen and his orchestra performed at the Ziegfeld Follies of 1925.

-- In 1935, the Bell and Howell Company of Chicago offered Windy Riley as a Filmosound rental subject.

-- Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was the first Louise Brooks film shown on television. The film was shown under the title Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood on November 18, 1948 on WJZ (Channel 7) in Asbury Park, New Jersey. (LINK)

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Coming in May on the Louise Brooks Society blog

The Louise Brooks Society blog is pleased to announce it will participate in two blogathons in the month of May.

The first is the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. This blogathon celebrates the contributions of Portuguese-speaking peoples and their descendants to world cinema. This fourth edition of the blogathon launches on Saturday, May 4, 2024. The heart of the event is Sunday, May 5, which is World Portuguese Language Day.  (UNESCO recognized the holiday in 2019.) The blogathon runs through Monday, May 6, 2024. 

The Louise Brooks Society blog plans to post on each of the three days of this blogathon. The proposed topics include

1. Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the Portuguese-American Press
2. Louise Brooks and Brazil – when Pandora’s Box was featured in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter
3. Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the Brazilian Magazines & Newspapers

There are other topics I could cover, like those having to do with Portugal itself, and Angola, but I will save those for next year. 

The Luso World Cinema Blogathon was begun by Brazilian film writer Letícia “Le” Magalhães and American film writer Beth Ann Gallagher. Beth is a longtime friend and supporter of the LBS. As a matter of fact, we met over the internet through our mutual interest in Louise Brooks. Later, when she moved to Northern California, we got to meet in person. She is a great person, and I would encourage everyone to check out her website / blog Spellbound with Beth Ann. 

More information on Luso World Cinema Blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE.

The Louise Brooks Society is a longtime member of the CMBA -- the Classic Movie Blog Association. Their banner is represented in the right hand column of this blog. (If you are a serious blogger, you should consider joining. It is a community of film buffs and movie lovers.)

The second blogathon in which the Louise Brooks Society blog will participate is the Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon. This year’s theme is Screen Debuts & Last Hurrahs -- a look at beginnings and endings of film careers. The Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon will run May 20-24, 2024.

The LBS blog plans to participate twice, on Monday, May 20 and Friday, May 24.

Louise Brooks debut - The Street of Forgotten Men (1925)
Louise Brooks last film - Overland Stage Raiders (1938)

More information on Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, screens 4 times in London in May

Pandora's Box (1929), the sensational German silent film starring Louise Brooks, will be shown four times in London during the month of May. It is not explicitly stated which print will be shown, but as the  stated running time is 135 minutes and the musical accompaniment is noted as being the Peer Raben score, I will assume the print is the recently released restoration which is recently making the rounds. Further details about this mini-series can be found HERE. 

This screening of the German film will be shown with English subtitles. The film comes with a PG certificate. The screenings will take place:

Saturday 04 May 2024 15:10  Studio  with the Peer Raben pre-recorded score

Friday 17 May 2024 18:00 NFT2  with the Peer Raben pre-recorded score

Saturday 25 May 2024 13:10 NFT3   with live piano accompaniment by Costas Fotopoulos

Friday 31 May 2024 14:30 NFT3  with the Peer Raben pre-recorded score

 

According to the BFI website: "Louise Brooks dazzles as the iconic showgirl who leaves a trail of destruction in her wake, in one of the great silent films of the Weimar era." A second note, by Ruby McGuigan, states, "Pabst’s startlingly modern adaptation of Wedekind’s Lulu plays follows the downward spiral of a vivacious showgirl, brought vibrantly to life by a live-wire Louise Brooks, wreaking casual havoc on all she encounters through the sheer power of charisma. Brooks’ irresistible charm and pathos made her a star, and anchored this sexually frank melodrama of lust, greed and violence."

A chronological confusion: Isn't it common practice to date a film to its year of release? As in The Godfather (1972) and Star Wars (1977) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

On the above referenced BFI page, Pandora Box is dated to 1928. That was the year it was made. It was released in 1929. 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.