Le journal d'une jeune fille perdue

It isn't difficult to see why Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl caused a bit of a headache for the censors back in 1929. Even for a movie made during the Weimar Republic era, a revolutionary time for cinema when directors were consistently pushing the boundaries with controversial tales of debauchery and Germany's seedy underbelly, the themes and social insight feel unnervingly modern. Teaming up once again with his muse Louise Brooks, the Kansas-born starlet plays Thymian, the naive daughter of a wealthy pharmacist who, in the opening scene, watches their maid leave the family home in shame when Thymian's father (Josef Rovensky) gets her pregnant.

Although it's clear to the audience, Thymian is puzzled as to why the girl has left. Her father's assistant, the creepy and much older Meinert (Fritz Rasp), invites her to the pharmacy that night on the promise to tell her everything, but instead takes advantage of the young girl and gets her pregnant. When the baby arrives, Thymian refuses to reveal who the father is but her family learn the truth from her diary, and insist that the two marry to avoid damage to the family's reputation. When she refuses, Thymian's baby is taken from her and she is packed off to a reformatory watched over by the intimidating director (Andrews Engelmann) and his tyrannical wife (Valeska Gert). After rebelling against the school, Thymian and a friend escape and join a brothel,

Like many films made during the Weimar era, Diary of a Lost Girl depicts the decay in almost every aspect of German society at the time. The lives of the rich are stripped bare, and their motivations are heavily questioned when the family send Thymian away not with her 'rehabilitation' in mind, but simply to save face. The reformatory itself is a cold and bleak place, where the director's wife bangs a rhythm for the inhabitants to rigidly eat their soup too. They are less concerned with helping the girls fit back into the society that has failed them, and more about satisfying their own sadistic desires. In one particularly effective close-up, the wife seems to be achieving some sort of sexual gratification from her monstrous behaviour.

The one place Thymian feels accepted on any sort of level is the brothel, a place where she can be herself without any kind of judgement or fear of social exile. While Thymian can at times be frustratingly naive and swoonish whenever she finds herself in the arms of a man, Louise Brooks delivers a tour de force performance that helps the audience maintain sympathy for her put-upon character, even when the film is at its most melodramatic. Even though the film is now 87 years old, Brooks's acting feels completely modern. Where most silent actors switch between rigid and operatic in their performances, Brooks is naturalistic and subtle, making it clear just why Pabst was so eager to work with her again after Pandora's Box, made the same year.

I saw Pandora's Box several years ago. At the time, Diary of a Lost Girl was unavailable for viewing. I discovered it had been re- released on DVD, completely restored. It is far superior to Pandora's Box, in my opinion. Louise Brooks plays Thyamin, a young innocent who is raped by her lothario father's chemist assistant. Her pregnancy results in her banishment from the house, and she is placed in a reform school. Her escape from the institution leads her to a brothel, where she spends her life until her father's death...when her life changes. Unlike Pandora's Box, which is about an unredeemable nymphomaniac, Diary of A Lost Girl is a story about loss, redemption, forgiveness, sacrifice, and hope. It has a much richer plotline, sublime cinematography, and Louise Brooks shone like a star. This film itself is a rediscovered treasure. Highly, highly recommended.

This excellent drama accomplishes the difficult task of being quite earthy, and often grim, in the ways that it depicts its characters and their lives, yet at the same time being an ultimately uplifting story about the possibilities of human understanding. It also features a fine performance by Louise Brooks. Her performance in "Diary of a Lost Girl" is on a par with that in "Pandora's Box", her other celebrated collaboration with G.W. Pabst.

The story has Brooks as a pharmacist's daughter whose young life is drastically changed by events that she can only dimly understand. From then on, she must endure a variety of trials while gradually learning some important lessons, often with only the barest help from those around her. The role contrasts nicely with her role in "Pandora's Box". Both in that film and in "Diary of a Lost Girl", she has the same level of energy and appeal, but in the former movie, right from the beginning she was very much the catalyst for the other characters' actions, while here she begins as an innocent youth who is completely at the mercy of all of the others, and then grows as the movie proceeds.

The settings are well-chosen so as both to contrast with her character, and to develop it. Her experiences show many aspects of the seamier side of both human nature and human living, and yet this is by no means a mere gratuitous display of sordidness, but rather a growing experience for Brooks's character. It culminates in an uplifting finale that is all the more effective for having arisen from material that is by no means idealistic.

The expressionistic style in the photography, lighting, and sets enhances the atmosphere and also the effectiveness of the story and the characters. The slightly stylized nature of both works quite well, and all of this contributes significantly to the high quality of the movie.

Louise Brooks stars as Thymian, the teenage daughter of a well-to-do pharmacist (Josef Rovensky). When Thymian is taken advantage of by her father's sleazy assistant Meinert (Fritz Rasp), she becomes pregnant. After the baby is born and given up for adoption, Thymian is sent to a reform school, where the harsh treatment sends her on to an even darker, more troubled future.

The source material was a scandalous novel by Margarete Bohme, and the film seems to be going for moral shock and titillation. Rasp is terrific in his defining role as the shark-like predatory Meinert. This was Brooks and Pabst's second collaboration, after 1928's Pandora's Box. Both films have developed a following since their release, and Brooks has become something of an iconic cult figure. But it's mainly from her appearance, as her performances are rather a blank slate. Some viewers may project more depth or nuance onto her, but to me she's a pretty mannequin. I wish the copy I had seen was better, and a top-to-bottom restoration would add much to film's appeal, I think.

The teenager Thymian Henning (Louise Brooks) lives with her father Karl Friedrich Henning and her aunt in a comfortable house. When the pregnant housekeeper Elisabeth (Sybille Schmitz) is fired, she commits suicide and is found drowned. Her father brings the new housekeeper Meta (Franziska Kinz) and sooner he flirts with her. Thymian is seduced by the pharmacist Meinert (Fritz Rasp) that rents her father's pharmacy downstairs. Thyamin gets pregnant and her father gives the baby Erika for a nanny and puts his daughter in a reformatory. Meanwhile, the idle Count Nicolas Osdorff (André Roanne) is left by his uncle to fend for himself. Karl Henning gets married with Meta and Thymian decides to escape from the boarding school helped by Count Osdorff.

During the night, Thymian runs away from the reformatory with a friend that gives an address to Thymian and the Count. Sooner she finds that the place is a brothel and without any alternative to survive, she works in the place. Years later, her father dies and Thymian inherits everything. But she needs a new identity and she gets married with the Count and becomes a Countess. However, when she sees her little sister leaving the house with her little brother and Meta, she gives her fortune to the child. When Count Osdorff discovers that she had given up the fortune, he commits suicide. Now the Elder Count Osdorff (Arnold Korff) feels responsible for the death of his cousin and promises to assist Thymian to have a better life. But she is still haunted by her past.

"Tagebuch einer Verlorenen", a.k.a. "Diary of a Lost Girl", is a masterpiece from Georg Wilhelm Pabst with a complex story of a teenager that has her life destroyed by the intolerance of her family after an irreparable mistake in the view of a 1929 society.

The plot has many twists and subtle scenes, like the debut of Thymian in the brothel with the client kissing her and turning off the lampshade. Louise Brooks is among the most beautiful faces of the cinema history and her acting is stunning as usual. The Count's last sentence "- with a little more love, no one on this Earth would ever be lost!" closes this film with golden key. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Diário de uma Garota Perdida" ("Diary of a Lost Girl")