Leaving Hollywood was a gamble for Louise Brooks, who had by the end of the Twenties reportedly grown restless with the studio system and had traveled to Europe. There she became involved with a trilogy of movies (and director G. W. Pabst on two of them) starting with PANDORA's BOX in Germany and culminating in France with PRIX DE BEAUTE, each considered essentials in her all-too-brief body of work. DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is the second collaboration between Brooks and Pabst and it's hard to point which one of the two is visually stronger. Both contain elements of strong German Expressionism. Although, where the former was drenched in dark images, the latter had a more cerebral darkness closer to the moral fabric of Margarethe Bohme's sordid story.
It's also hard to say in which one of the two Pabst films Louise Brooks looks better because in both she has extremely modulated performances way ahead of her time, dismissed when they were released, re-discovered over the years. Where in PANDORA'S BOX Brooks had that one remarkable scene where she seduces the doctor who's taken her in as the doctor's son walks in on them, rendering her sensuality to that of a cool, Goth dominatrix thirty years before Bettie Page, in DIARY, as the innocent Thymiane Henning, she's seen as a virginal survivor. Clearly, the camera loves here even more here as her dark looks give way to an ethereal beauty looking for her inner woman while a world filled with dark people threaten to quench her light out.
It becomes an outrage of almost mythical proportions when Thymiane falls from grace due to actions outside of her control; in searching for the truth as to why a beloved maid has decided to leave the house she falls into the sexual trap of her father's assistant, Meinhert. Nine months later she gives birth to a child, but because she refuses to marry Meinhert she is sent to a reform school where she is stripped of her elegance and forced to become an automaton under the uber-strict, iron hand of both Directors of the reform school. There she also befriends another girl, Erika, with whose help she escapes. Going back home proves fruitless -- she learns her child has died. Having nothing to hold on to, she tracks down her friend Erika who is now working in a brothel for a madam.
It's here where life warms up to Thymiane as she slowly joins the land of the living. However, an encounter with her family leads to heartbreak when they see what she has become. Even so, she marries into wealth (as her father dies and leaves her nothing and Meinhert tries one last time to trick her into coming back home), and is finally able to help the other girls who still live in oppression at the reform school as she denounces its evils.
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is all but a dark affair. Despite the lurid elements of the story, it's extremely compassionate as heard by the near-ambient score, and those close ups where Louise Brooks' transcendent face fills the screen and serenely communicates a myriad of emotions at key scenes differentiate it from PANDORA'S BOX, where Brook's Lulu was always seen in shadows and was essentially a fallen woman spiralling down into tragedy. For the time it was considered scandalous and erotic -- if anything, its eroticism is implied more than seen. The scene where Meinhert seduces Thymiane is charged with a huge amount of electricity, as is the scene when the stern headmistress is banging her drum to a beat she only knows as the girls exercise. Hers is an ugly performance, typical of predatory lesbians preying on girls they can't have, and it's one that can't be (unfairly) considered stereotypical.
Time has proved to be kind to the Pabst's masterpiece. Storywise, it's still contemporary in many ways -- it's no different than the story of PALINDROMES in spirit. There are moments of weirdness, such as when Thymiane drinks liquor at the brothel and gets loose as the clients and other prostitutes watch, or the bizarre exchange between Thymiane and her male client. The delicacy in which the darker aspects of the story are handled elevate it from being a merely exploitative film, and there is one haunting moment when a male client tells Thymiane, "We're all lost." It's a tender scene of solidarity within a world that only sees such woman as tainted and men as lecherous. A historic movie that should be discovered by people looking to find the roots of subtle acting and subdued drama.
It's also hard to say in which one of the two Pabst films Louise Brooks looks better because in both she has extremely modulated performances way ahead of her time, dismissed when they were released, re-discovered over the years. Where in PANDORA'S BOX Brooks had that one remarkable scene where she seduces the doctor who's taken her in as the doctor's son walks in on them, rendering her sensuality to that of a cool, Goth dominatrix thirty years before Bettie Page, in DIARY, as the innocent Thymiane Henning, she's seen as a virginal survivor. Clearly, the camera loves here even more here as her dark looks give way to an ethereal beauty looking for her inner woman while a world filled with dark people threaten to quench her light out.
It becomes an outrage of almost mythical proportions when Thymiane falls from grace due to actions outside of her control; in searching for the truth as to why a beloved maid has decided to leave the house she falls into the sexual trap of her father's assistant, Meinhert. Nine months later she gives birth to a child, but because she refuses to marry Meinhert she is sent to a reform school where she is stripped of her elegance and forced to become an automaton under the uber-strict, iron hand of both Directors of the reform school. There she also befriends another girl, Erika, with whose help she escapes. Going back home proves fruitless -- she learns her child has died. Having nothing to hold on to, she tracks down her friend Erika who is now working in a brothel for a madam.
It's here where life warms up to Thymiane as she slowly joins the land of the living. However, an encounter with her family leads to heartbreak when they see what she has become. Even so, she marries into wealth (as her father dies and leaves her nothing and Meinhert tries one last time to trick her into coming back home), and is finally able to help the other girls who still live in oppression at the reform school as she denounces its evils.
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is all but a dark affair. Despite the lurid elements of the story, it's extremely compassionate as heard by the near-ambient score, and those close ups where Louise Brooks' transcendent face fills the screen and serenely communicates a myriad of emotions at key scenes differentiate it from PANDORA'S BOX, where Brook's Lulu was always seen in shadows and was essentially a fallen woman spiralling down into tragedy. For the time it was considered scandalous and erotic -- if anything, its eroticism is implied more than seen. The scene where Meinhert seduces Thymiane is charged with a huge amount of electricity, as is the scene when the stern headmistress is banging her drum to a beat she only knows as the girls exercise. Hers is an ugly performance, typical of predatory lesbians preying on girls they can't have, and it's one that can't be (unfairly) considered stereotypical.
Time has proved to be kind to the Pabst's masterpiece. Storywise, it's still contemporary in many ways -- it's no different than the story of PALINDROMES in spirit. There are moments of weirdness, such as when Thymiane drinks liquor at the brothel and gets loose as the clients and other prostitutes watch, or the bizarre exchange between Thymiane and her male client. The delicacy in which the darker aspects of the story are handled elevate it from being a merely exploitative film, and there is one haunting moment when a male client tells Thymiane, "We're all lost." It's a tender scene of solidarity within a world that only sees such woman as tainted and men as lecherous. A historic movie that should be discovered by people looking to find the roots of subtle acting and subdued drama.