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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.

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.

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")

Silent films may not be for everybody, some may find some of them static, histrionic and creaky. Likewise with films from the 20s, with those being adapted from stage plays having a lot of traps that tended to be fallen into. As for me, while there are some that are not great or even good and do not hold up there are plenty that are good and even great. Such as the best of FW Murnau, Fritz Lang, DW Griffith and Abel Gance, all of whom did some very influential work.

GW Pabst is another director to fit under this distinction. He was a major influence in films and was known for his direction of actresses that he had found and developed their acting skills. One of those actresses was Louise Brooks, a gifted and very uniquely photogenic actresses and Pabst was one of the few directors to recognise the major strengths she had and used them to full advantage. Something that sadly did not happen when she transitioned into sound, where people did not seem to know what to do with her. He was also known for doing films that dealt with the difficulties and dangers of women. He proved that again in specifically his films with Brooks, especially 'Pandora's Box' and this film 'Diary of a Lost Girl'.

'Diary of a Lost Girl' may have been butchered by censorship, including a lot of content being excised and the ending apparently not what Pabst had originally intended (correct if wrong). It still remains an incredibly powerful picture that makes one amazed at how such a sordid subject was portrayed on film to this extent, seldom done in film beforehand and not in a way that probably will have shocked many.

It is not quite perfect, though it nearly is. In my view the ending felt a little too preachy.

However, three things are especially brilliant in 'Diary of a Lost Girl'. The cinematography is just exquisite with some incredibly stylish and atmospheric camera angles, which makes it far from visually static. It's handsomely designed too and has some suitably moody lighting. The Expressionistic look enhances the uncompromising atmosphere so well. Pabst's direction is lean and creates a sense of tense uneasiness without ever being ill at ease, handling a harrowing and for back then brave subject and pulling no punches. Brooks is mesmerising in a truly powerful performance that is among her best.

The supporting cast are not quite as great, but are more than solid. The standout to me being Valeska Gert as the beastly matron, calling the character beastly actually is being too kind and Gert is quite frightening. While the ending doesn't completely come off, it at least didn't feel tacked on (unlike too many films that suffered from censor tinkering) and maintained the rest of the film's harrowing tone. Complete with a final line that stays in the mind. The story pulls no punches and still shocks, not feeling tame today.

Overall, wonderful film. 9/10

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.