Diagonaldi Very well executed

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

chaos-rampant You must have Pabst in your life at some point. Time it well, seek out a few silents beforehand. It was an exciting era for movies anyway, you're going to have a lot of fun. Context will be valuable. That is because Pabst does not set out to impress on the scope of Lang or Murnau, who impress easily, and you may be fooled that he's pretty ordinary. Not so. I rate him as the top German filmmaker of the time, the man had a truly subtle , humane touch that cut deep.It may seem as pretty ordinary, this one. It's melodrama about a hapless young girl who is neglected and abused: unwanted pregnancy, forced marriage, reformatory, prostitution. It is a journey of maturity that takes her through many worlds, most of them depressing. DW Griffith would have done this in somber , sanctimonious tones. Chaplin could do it frivolously, with a bit of kindly fate in the machine of sorrow. Pabst did it another way, and it's his way that most likely has influenced our contemporary understanding of cinematic melodrama as something quite pure and sophisticated.That sophistication is seeking ways to deliver both the redemptive story and many ways, different paths to reason and emotion, some of them shrouded in dream, and seems to have carried on from here to Sirk to elsewhere and Lynch.I want to devote this comment to all these items of, let's say, peripheral narrative vision. You can read up a description of the story in the other comments.There's Louise Brooks for one, exquisite beauty even among movie queens of the silent era. But Pabst was sensitive; unlike Sternberg in Blue Angel, he doesn't frame her for sex, trusting the male gaze to work the usual way anyway. Brooks both here and in Pandora's Box is a spirited , swanlike creature.There are four worlds that she travels through, possibly more. Each one revealed by the treatment of sex. The first is the parental nest, sex is covert yet (the tryst with the maid) and she is a sheltered child, naive and innocent of finer implications around her. The film begins portentously with a suicide and a man promising truth of the story. In a roundabout way he does, by exploiting sexual vulnerability.The second world is at the reformatory: it is a simplistic world with stock villains (matron - guard) where expressions of sexuality are forbidden. Here others administer decisions and she only has to obey the story. It is very much a stepdown into childhood, but in a way that is painfully clear to her (in the parent's nest, she had illusions of freedom). A revolt is staged and she escapes.What she doesn't know, is that she escapes to a high-class brothel. We find out as she does, when an envelope full of money arrives the morning after a night of drinking, merrymaking and sex. But - as sex enters the picture - so this is a world now where people are ambiguous figures, not always villains. Here a creep looking for sex is repudiated, only for the kind protector to assume his place: this man has noble aspirations to save the girls, but he'd much rather have a good time. He's a bit of a hypocrite, but it would be a puritanical stretch to think him bad. Here she learns to endure and persist.Now for the best part. The narrative is on the top level in the form of excerpts from a diary. But, you will note steadily the introduction of more and more subtle, visual dislocations from the ordinary. That male gaze mysteriously lulls her to sleep both times she has sex. Both times it's against her will, both times signify a turn in the gear of the world. The second time is accompanied by the bedroom door inexplicably opening ajar by its own self, and then the lover and a sedated Louise in his arms waltz into frame. It's a heady , seductive shot.It's obvious what Pabst is getting at - she succumbs to the role expected of her - but in doing so, succeeds in demanding from us a different set of reasoning tools for the rest of the film. There are several more shots of her asleep in the hands of men, as though dreaming her whole ordeal. Dance is a main thread, and wrapped around the recurring notion of deciding the depth of your performance.That different set of tools is, at the same time as the world around her changes, and demands each time a different response, getting to note semiconscious spillovers inside of her.This aspect of the work is amazing. Look how, in both the reformatory and brothel, she is part of a chorus of girls, usually framed with two or more girls hovering beside her, and it's that chorus instead of just herself that is experiencing the story, as though part of that fragile self has splintered by the trauma, and each splintered self has taken mirrored shape around her to shoulder part of the pain. (compare to the brothel scenes from Inland Empire)The fourth world is having learned to cope, and that allows her to return to the early stages of the story, starting with another scene of dance and frolicking by the beach, and eventually save one of those splintered selves from the same fate.Something to meditate upon.

dlee2012 The second G. W. Pabst/Louise Brooks collaboration comes close to equaling its predecessor in terms of depicting a world in moral decay through the plight of a fallen woman. Brooks' acting is slightly weaker at the beginning of the film, where she struggles to portray her character as a naive youngster. She becomes far more convincing as the film progresses and her character grows.As with Pandora's Box, there is a somewhat lurid atmosphere to this film, with each major character acting in their own, sometimes depraved, self-interest. For instance, one of the overseers at the reformatory confiscates a girl's lipstick, only to apply it to his own lips when he is back in his office. As with Pandora's Box, it is tempting to read this as symbolic of the decadent moral climate of Weimar Berlin. The general theme of rising and falling fortunes, sometimes due to one's own actions and sometimes due to events beyond one's control must have spoken to Depression-era audiences, though.The diary features prominently as a device early in the film but is forgotten towards the end. Perhaps, as Brooks' character has grown, she no longer feels she needs it but this is not depicted clearly. Rather, it seems to have simply been forgotten.The Kino edition of this film has a beautiful, very moving score that fits the scenes incredibly well. In fact, it is the best I have heard for any silent film.Ultimately, this film is on a par with Pandora's Box. Both are well-executed melodramas that reflect the seediness and decadence of the era and Brooks' acting is refreshingly modern in each.

didi-5 'Diary of a Lost Girl' is a classy silent feature which centres on Thymian (Louise Brooks, fresh from 'Pandora's Box'), first seen as sweet and innocent young thing who takes the wrong turning after becoming pregnant by her father's pharmacy assistant (the repellent Fritz Rasp).Sent to a reformatory for fallen young ladies which is run by a shaven headed thug and a butch matron, she meets Erika (Edith Meinhard), a sometime prostitute, and eventually escapes with her to join a brothel, fall in with a rich count, and find her fortune.Directed with panache by Pabst, this film still has a fresh feel and some beautiful close-up photography of Brooks in particular. The tale of Thymian's ups and downs keeps you interested right to the final few sequences. Wonderfully atmospheric and well acted, this film is a good example of a late silent.

jonathan-577 Yow, what is not to like about Louise Brooks. Seriously. This is the first of her too-few movies I've seen straight through and as Siue says she is The Most Beautiful Person In History; with her angular, boyish fashions and wry sideways smile to compliment her beaming grin, she also leaps out of her context like she got there by time machine. And there's a hell of a movie built around her. The plastic is a meller about a fair maiden's victimization by a conniving pharmacist - in fact ALL the men in this film are either ogres or clods, and there's a bald headmaster who you will laugh at a lot once I whisper you the words "Stephen Harper". But Pabst, who knows his Brecht (he did the Threepenny movie), twists this stuff two ways. When he feels like it, he directs actors with a subtlety and precision I've never seen in a silent movie before: a lot of the narrative is told entirely with the actors' eyes. But at the same time, this film is not just witty, it's GOOFY, with broad comic scenes that skirt the ridiculous in a way that challenges you from left field - dare you laugh at a silent masterpiece when it presents a spoiled aristocrat failing to milk a cow, or a horny bastard (one of several) with a Kropotkinesque goatee mincing around the dance lesson like he's in a Dwain Esper movie? It's like, popular entertainment!!