Trois pages d'un journal

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

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")

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.

When I startes watching "Diary of a lost girl" my expectation was that this was a twin film of "Pandora's box" (1929, Georg Wilhelm Pabst). Both films were a Pabst / Louise Brooks collaboration and in both films (I thought) the Louise Brooks character (Lulu in "Pandora's box" and Thymian in "Diary of a lost girl") symbolized the decadence of the roaring twenties.

I was surprised that after all Thymian is entirely different from Lulu. Lulu is a call girl (who ends badly), and Thymian is in the first place a victim of a society in which it is "normal" that men satisfy their sexual needs and women pay the price. Because Thymian differs from Lulu, "Diary of a lost girl" differs from "Pandora's box". In effect "Diary of a lost girl" is more akin to "The joyless street" (1925, Georg Wilhelm Pabst).

One of the lead actress of "The joyless street" was Greta Garbo. For her the Pabst film was the start of her career. For Louise Brooks it was the end. She was too independent for the Hollywood dream factory. In retrospect however the two films she made with Pabst gave her immortality (some decades later).

Apart from the Thymian character I was amazed by the rather obvious lesbian character of the matron of the reformatory Thymian is sent to (when she has "to pay the price"). The film was however made outside Hollywood in the first place and before the production code in the second. The actress playing this role (Valeska Gert) is moreover another link to "The joyless street". In this film she plays Frau Greifer, who runs a nightclub annex brothel.