VividSimon
Simply Perfect
Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
Borserie
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
zetes
A wonderful surprise! I've always heard that Louise Brooks' follow-up to her two star-making hits with G.W. Pabst was a pleasant but inconsequential swan song. I thought it was very good, with an absolutely brilliant performance by Brooks. Co-written by Pabst and Rene Clair, this is basically a silent movie with overdubbed sound. Thus, the director is able to avoid the stodginess that comes with early sound filmmaking. He uses a very intimate, fluid style with the camera drifting through crowds to discover the beautiful Ms. Brooks' face. The one big problem the film has is that Brooks' love interest (Georges Charlia) is so totally unworthy of Brooks from the start that you can never come close to sympathizing with him. But that's not that important, really. Brooks plays Charlia's fiancée. He forbids her from entering the Miss France contest, but she's already done so. When she wins the opportunity to compete for Miss Europe, she chooses to disobey him. When she wins the competition, the fame and male attention drives her back to Charlia. But poor, married life soon seems much worse to her. The film is extremely worthwhile just for the expressions of Brooks' face alone. Though she has words, as dubbed in by a French actress, she doesn't need them. Her smiles seem created by a filmmaking Leonardo, and her pains are ours. Lulu could never have survived in the talkies (and I've seen the proof, a short film she made with Roscoe Arbuckle shortly after this one), and perhaps the loss of Brooks is the greatest of the talking picture era.
plegowik
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!
tprofumo
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.
Louise-14
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.
