Prix de beauté (Miss Europe)

Louise Brooks gives a wonderful performance in this well-made French melodrama. She plays a typist named Lucienne who, despite being in love with a man named Andre, dreams of rising above her position in life. She sees opportunity in a beauty contest for Miss Europe, but Andre is furious when he discovers that she's entered, then demands that she withdraw. She tries to take back her entry only to discover that she's already been chosen as Miss France and will now go on to the main pageant.

This is a story of love, loss and decision played out to its passionate end. The movie is very energetically filmed by director Augusto Genina and cinema tographers Rudolf Mate and Louis Nee. The filming style is more like modern movies than the Hollywood flicks of the '30s, and shows the different style employed by Europeans. There are many fast cuts and traveling shots, mostly done with great skill and verve. The high energy of the movie's first third dwindles a bit in the middle but picks up again in the last 15 minutes.

The performances were very good by all the principals, but that of Louise Brooks is especially memorable. Louise leans heavily on her silent screen skills even though this is a talkie, but because her silent style had a surprisingly contemporary, understated feel, she makes the transition to talkies very well. The long early scene at the fair was especially poignant as Louise used her remarkably expressive eyes to convey her growing sense of misery and alienation, of being trapped in a life she no longer wants. I doubt it's ever been done better.

The film builds to a superb finale, artfully shot, powerful and stylish. This is really some of the best stuff of the early days of film. And the tragic storyline only underscores the greater tragedy that this is the final starring role for Louise Brooks. She wasn't just a great beauty who looked fantastic in a swimsuit, she really was a major acting talent who basically threw it all away. We are all the poorer for that.

This movie is less well known than her German films with G.W. Pabst, but I think it's a better one. I think this crew is just better at storytelling than Pabst, and while Prix de Beaute may lack the deep moral complexity of the Pabst films, it's much easier to follow and is overall a more streamlined, focused piece of work. And it doesn't hurt that Louise's singing parts are done by Edith Piaf, either.

Bottom line, this is a classic Louise Brooks film well worth looking for.

Artisticly shot, actors portray exactly their role. You get a real feeling watching Lucienne ascend from poverty to the most beautiful girl around. A sense of tragedy to triumph to tragedy again. All in all I have seen this film at least 10 times. And can VERY well say that Prix De Beute' (the Beauty Prize, Miss Europe) is a MAJOR favorite in my silent film collection. The expressiveness of Louise Brooks is perfect and I recommend this film to ANYONE who appreciates artistic beauty coupled with a tragic story line.

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.

I just saw MoMA's restored print of the silent version of Prix de Beaute. FAR better than the sound version, which is badly post-synched, shorter, and poorly paced. Bravo to the crew of restorationists who've given us back this fine film! (Trivia: The contract that Lucienne receives from the movie studio says on its letterhead, "Films, silent and talking" - an indication of how some studios were still hedging their bets in 1929-30.)

Brooks' performance is very much of a piece with her work in the Pabst films, but takes it in some interesting new directions - whereas Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl are about the demimonde, Prix de Beaute is about a humble young woman's introduction to the bright, shiny new world of the media, modern technology, and the fame machine that they created.

The collaboration of Pabst and Rene Clair on the screenplay is every bit as intriguing as it sounds. The first half, centering on Lucienne and her friends at the newspaper (she's a typist, her beau a linotype operator), is the Clair part - showing a fascination with recording equipment, movies, and the way the media manufactures icons. There's a sense optimism and a tremendous vigor to the life of working Paris portrayed here.

The second half is the Pabst part, where everything turns dark as Lucienne's fairy tale as a beauty queen ends and she faces life as a working class housewife. She makes her escape only to have that life catch up with her. The ending is unforgettable, forcing the viewer to consider the ways that illusion and reality become confused in modern life, sometimes tragically. Clear through, the film shows a fine sense of class distinctions - how modern life can break them down and the traps they still set. Aside from Pabst's and Clair's own films, Prix de Beaute calls to mind Dreiser's novels, particularly An American Dream and Sister Carrie. Sunset Boulevard is anticipated as well. Makes one regret all the more American studios' indifference to Brooks - there was so much she could have done with any number of classic American roles.

Brooks' work here is easily as good as her performances in the Pabst films, and Mate's and Nee's cinematography renders her stunning to look at. What a supremely expressive face! Too bad that this would be her last great film - not a full-blown classic, but a real gem.

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!