November 30, 1929—Hollywood didn’t know what to do with Louise Brooks, but German director G. W. Pabst did, immediately hiring her once Paramount Pictures freed the restless starlet from her contract.
Die Buchse der Pandora, a.k.a. Pandora’s Box, premiered on this date in Berlin, one day before this second of two Pabst-Brooks collaborations opened in New York City.
American critics were as unimpressed by Brooks as studio execs. As the actress recalled years later, the general tone of the reviews went, “Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing.”
Nowadays, of course, film aficionados—especially critics—feel differently. With her dancer’s body, flapper smile and trademark black bangs, the free-spirited Brooks set a standard for unapologetic amorality on screen that shocked in its own time and remains provocative to this day.
Her character Lulu, a kind of Zelig of carnality, turns up seemingly everywhere, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake, until, in her one act of kindness, she agrees to forego sex for pay with a penniless stranger: Jack the Ripper.
Brooks, who also worked with Pabst on Diary of a Lost Girl, came to revere the director for “his truthful picture of this world of pleasure which let me play Lulu naturally,” in what she termed the “childish simpleness of vice.”
The actress had another reason to be grateful to the director, besides his careful but sure-handed guidance of her performance: he had gone to bat for her at a critical time.
Waiting in his office when Pabst received the cable from Paramount stating that he could have Brooks was another actress whose knowing lasciviousness was not what he had in mind for the passive temptress Lulu. Germans would come to resent the fact that this landmark role would go to an American rather than one of their own, but within a year, with The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich would make her mark anyway.
In certain ways, Brooks’ life after her iconic performance was not unlike Lulu’s. There was the same allure to men and women (including, reportedly, not only Dietrich but Greta Garbo); the same string of lovers who couldn’t forget or get over her; the same headlong descent (in Brooks’ case, not just leaving Hollywood but taking up drink and escort work); the same financial maintenance by lovers (or, in the case of CBS head William Paley, an ex-lover).
But, against all the odds, Brooks’was saved from destruction by the power of art—both the acting that absorbed her energy for only a decade of acting, and the film writing on film she began in middle age. Her essays, featuring both her piquant takes on the magic of cinema and her memories of legends such as W.C. Fields and Humphrey Bogart, were good enough to be collected into Lulu in Hollywood.
As for her acting, well, let’s put it this way: In her seventies, living in seclusion in Rochester, N.Y., her image in Pandora’s Box was still enough to obsess the critic Kenneth Tynan, who tracked down the actress and profiled her in the 1979 New Yorker article, “The Girl in the Black Helmet.”
Her image has become so indelible--even for those who might not immediately recognize her name--that Jonathan Demme paid a knowing tribute to her by naming Melanie Griffith's wild alter-ego "Lulu"--and giving her the requisite dark bangs to go with it--in Something Wild.
Die Buchse der Pandora, a.k.a. Pandora’s Box, premiered on this date in Berlin, one day before this second of two Pabst-Brooks collaborations opened in New York City.
American critics were as unimpressed by Brooks as studio execs. As the actress recalled years later, the general tone of the reviews went, “Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing.”
Nowadays, of course, film aficionados—especially critics—feel differently. With her dancer’s body, flapper smile and trademark black bangs, the free-spirited Brooks set a standard for unapologetic amorality on screen that shocked in its own time and remains provocative to this day.
Her character Lulu, a kind of Zelig of carnality, turns up seemingly everywhere, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake, until, in her one act of kindness, she agrees to forego sex for pay with a penniless stranger: Jack the Ripper.
Brooks, who also worked with Pabst on Diary of a Lost Girl, came to revere the director for “his truthful picture of this world of pleasure which let me play Lulu naturally,” in what she termed the “childish simpleness of vice.”
The actress had another reason to be grateful to the director, besides his careful but sure-handed guidance of her performance: he had gone to bat for her at a critical time.
Waiting in his office when Pabst received the cable from Paramount stating that he could have Brooks was another actress whose knowing lasciviousness was not what he had in mind for the passive temptress Lulu. Germans would come to resent the fact that this landmark role would go to an American rather than one of their own, but within a year, with The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich would make her mark anyway.
In certain ways, Brooks’ life after her iconic performance was not unlike Lulu’s. There was the same allure to men and women (including, reportedly, not only Dietrich but Greta Garbo); the same string of lovers who couldn’t forget or get over her; the same headlong descent (in Brooks’ case, not just leaving Hollywood but taking up drink and escort work); the same financial maintenance by lovers (or, in the case of CBS head William Paley, an ex-lover).
But, against all the odds, Brooks’was saved from destruction by the power of art—both the acting that absorbed her energy for only a decade of acting, and the film writing on film she began in middle age. Her essays, featuring both her piquant takes on the magic of cinema and her memories of legends such as W.C. Fields and Humphrey Bogart, were good enough to be collected into Lulu in Hollywood.
As for her acting, well, let’s put it this way: In her seventies, living in seclusion in Rochester, N.Y., her image in Pandora’s Box was still enough to obsess the critic Kenneth Tynan, who tracked down the actress and profiled her in the 1979 New Yorker article, “The Girl in the Black Helmet.”
Her image has become so indelible--even for those who might not immediately recognize her name--that Jonathan Demme paid a knowing tribute to her by naming Melanie Griffith's wild alter-ego "Lulu"--and giving her the requisite dark bangs to go with it--in Something Wild.
1 comment:
One of the most iconic faces of all time. Many people don't know who she is, but they all recognize that amazing face. Pandora's Box is one of my favorite silent movies of all time. Thanks for the post. What a cool broad.
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