Prix de beauté (Miss Europe)

It is often only after years pass that we can look back and see those stars who are truly stars. As that French film critic, whose name escapes me, said: "There is no Garbo. There is no Dietrich. There is only Louise Brooks"; and there is, thank heavens! Louise Brooks! This is the third of her European masterpieces. But it is also an exceptional film for being one, if not the, first French talkie, for following a script written by famed René Clair, for reportedly being finished (the direction, that is) by Georg Pabst, and for incorporating the voice of Edith Piaf before she was well known! So much talent working on and in a film, how couldn't it turn out to be a masterpiece?! And that's what this film is. It's a shame Louise Brooks was blackballed by Hollywood when she came back to the States--so much talent cast so arrogantly by the wayside! In the film, in addition to getting to watch Louise Brooks in action, it's great to see pictures of Paris ca. 1930 and to hear Piaf's young voice. I never get tired of this film!

With lots of sunshine, gauzy light and shadow filtering through windows and into rooms, tracking shots moving through crowds with hand-held camera, quick-paced editing and extreme close-ups here and there, the photography is the thing in this interesting, artistically done film.

The plot of this film starts out as a bit of fluff about a beauty contest. The film begins on a warm Sunday at the local swimming pool, where we meet the lovely Lucienne aka Lulu (played by Louise Brooks) - a bit of a show-off in front of the gawking men by poolside, she soon decides to enter herself to represent France in the Miss Europe beauty contest, much to the chagrin of her very jealous, stick-in-the-mud fiancé (a pretty annoying fellow, really). Strutting down the runway the ten contestants display themselves in swimsuits, while the winner is chosen as the contestant who receives the longest applause (I was wondering, couldn't the girls just walk slower to prolong their length of time - and thus applause - on the catwalk?!). Lulu is soon being chased by a Prince and a Maharaja, but her hot-headed beau doesn't like the attentions paid to her by other men or her adoring public, for that matter (I guess he just wants her in his house, cooking his meals, and staying out of sight, eh?!).

Louise Brooks is beautiful and charming, her presence helps enhance this film, but it's really the way it is photographed that held my interest the most. A bit distracting is the odd dubbed sound, which is a bit off. The print on this version looked very clear and full of nice contrast though. Watching this I just tried to overlook the sound problems and watch the film visually, and I found the movie to be excellent, well worth seeing.

"Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe)" (aka "Beauty Prize") (1930) is an outstanding example of where the participants - the actors and actresses, the director, and especially the cinematographer and editor - outdo the material by a very large margin. This French film was released as both a silent and a sound film; had a scene or two goat-glanded, and also was overdubbed (in the original language!) disgustingly! My version is in an okay print, but the version is a sound version with dubbing that I turned down low enough so that what I saw was a silent with minuscule jingles of sound and intrusive (but needed) sub-titles which were not "sub" but thrown up largely in the middle of the picture! I had a difficult time getting into the show for the first few minutes, and they're the few minutes that really should be the ones that WOW someone into watching. Louise Brooks peels off her outer clothes to a bathing suit, and she goes into the water. She's certainly not difficult to watch! What was surprising to me was the fact that this film was written by René Clair.

This was the third in the trilogy of films Louise Brooks made in Europe before returning to fail in a career that had been rocketing - at least it appears that way looking backwards. She'd appeared in "Pandora's Box" (1929) in Germany, then went to Poland to appear in "Diary of a Lost Girl" (1929) for a German company, then appeared in this film for director Augusto Genina in France.

Also in this film are Georges Charlia as André, the fiancé of Brooks' character, Lucienne Garnier; Augusto Bandini; Jean Bradin; Yves Glad; Gaston Jacquet; and many others. The film begins by showing the relationship between Lucienne and André. They are typical working class Parisian lovers, with André a linotype setter for a newspaper and Lucienne a typist. André is rather naïve, and figures that with marriage he can control - and that's the operative word - Lucienne and be a very dominant husband. Lucienne, on the other hand, also quite naïve, but wanting to explore the world on a much grander scale, thinks she loves André, but may have needs he can't supply. She enters a beauty contest, becomes Miss France, and then goes on to become Miss Europe. The entire complexion of the story and the relationship between the two changes. I could give away the rest of the story, but that would be spoiling the climax. Suffice it to say, that for Americans who've plodded through enough episodes of "The Closer" or "Law and Order" on television, the ending is, well...that hint should suffice...

The photography was actually manipulative. It made the eye follow every movement of the camera, and then there'd be close-ups that made the brain think, then made the viewer feel. It was quite spectacular for 1931, almost documentary style following characters in a diary-like fashion. The direction was impeccable. But, what makes this film tick is the precision editing. The cut-tos and the change of plot point to another are as professional and perfect as I've ever seen. It's the story that just cuts this from 10/10 to 7/10 or 8/10. Too bad.

Don't be disappointed, though. If you can find a silent print of this in great condition, it will be a joy to watch. Brooks is such a superlative actress and the camera absolutely loves her like a bride. She's radiant!

Cult icon Louise Brooks was never better than she is in this early French talkie, which turned out to be her last staring role.

While Brooks' two German films, "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl" are far better known in the US, "Prix" is clearly just as good a film, in my view much better than the butchered "Diary."

"Prix" tells a simple story of a working class French girl who dreams of a better life and sets out to get it by entering a beauty pageant. Rising all the way to the position of "Miss Europe," she then gives it all up for the working class man she loves. But she finds that life as a housewife in a dreary walk up flat is killing her soul, as is her jealous husband, and eventually she walks out when she gets a chance at a film contract. But her husband won't let her go and the film builds to a tragic ending that is still considered one of the best climatic scenes in film history.

This film features strong direction, extremely exciting location photography by famed cinematographer (and later director) Rudolph Mate and an intelligent,Spartan script by Rene Clair.

But the wonder of the film is Brooks herself. Although her voice is dubbed by a French actress (Brooks didn't speak French) the film was initially planned as a silent and in large chunks of it, her character doesn't speak, anyway. But Brooks' fortune was her face and what she could do with it and there are few in film history who could do more. While there are some echos of silent film technique in her work, she was so far ahead of her time that most of her performance seems as fresh today as it did in 1929. Whether she is the unhappy girl being dragged by her boyfriend through a working class mob at a carnaval, or the depressed housewife staring into a canary's cage and feeling just as trapped, Brooks is a revelation.

But it is when she is happy in this film that Brooks simply leaps off the screen at you. In most of the still photos she shot over the years, Brooks doesn't smile, apparently because she'd promised herself not to ever wear one of those pasted on grins found on showgirls on stage. But when called upon in a film to express happiness, no one ever exceeded Brooks, who may be the most magnetic actress in film history.

While "Pandora's Box" will always be her signature film, "Prix de Beaute" ranks a close second in my mind as the best film work of her career.

This is a beautiful film, easy to follow the story even in the French language version without subtitles because of the great pantomime performance by Louise Brooks: her facial expressions and reactions to events tell the whole story from beginning to end. She submits her own photographs to the contest sponsored by the newspaper (or magazine) that she works for as a typist, but later tries to withdraw from, but then, surprise, she wins the title of Miss France and and is sent to Spain (wearing an ermine or chinchilla coat) for the bigger event of Miss Europe. Her fiancé for some reason is angry by the attention and misunderstands. When she unwraps the pears for the dinner table she is stunned to see a picture of herself in the crumpled newspaper. A motif that her growing fame is stalking her. There are several scenes with clocks behind Miss Brooks foreshadowing the climax. Very poignant is the scene when he takes her to a photographer for a family picture of them together, she is very sad (but tears are unnecessary and might have made the scene over sentimental). Her ironic scene with the canary is a cinematic allusion to her previous 1928 silent film The Canary Murder Case (in which her character was also murdered, another irony), for which she refused to return to Hollywood to dub her voice ... odd to note that a French speaking actress dubbed her few lines (Miss Brooks says one or two words, but several words in French are rapidly spoken). The most ironic scene of all is the private screening of herself on film. Incidentally, I recognized the unmistakable voice of Josephine Baker as the singing voice for Miss Brooks during three segments. When she sees herself on the screen for the first time her joy and fascination with the cinema version of herself is amazing; she is enraptured as if the beauty belongs to somebody else, and not her real self. When her hand is held by the man sitting next to her in the projection room during this scene, she is aware but her smile is not for him, it is for her screen image that she continues to stare at. This is the climax when her fiancé sneaks pass the guard to find her in the projection room, sees the ecstasy on her face and sees the man next to her holding her hand, which he misunderstands.