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Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929)

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent Drama – Earthy, Yet Ultimately Uplifting – With A Fine Performance By Louise Brooks, 14 March 2005
Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio

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.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
The modern melodrama was born., 8 August 2005

Author: dbdumonteil

The melodrama we would love with Stahl's and Sirk's works was born with Pabst .We are far from DW Griffith's "orphans in the storm" !Although implausible,this film has realist accents and Pabst's directing takes our breath away.And what a beautiful last line:"Nobody's lost when there's a little love!"

Melodrama is par excellence a woman's story.An unfairly treated woman.Its construction is parabolic: happiness,downfall,redemption. But "Tagebuch" is much more complex;its first part already features tragedy:Elisabeth's suicide is a sinister omen.

Admirable sequences:

The reformatory where two martinets (a shrew and a terrifying smiling bald man)treat their pupils like dogs.The scene when the girls eat their soup is unforgettable.

The scene at the notary's office where Thymiane returns good for evil ,which climaxes the movie.Pabst uses no (or so few) subtitles : his pictures have the strength of a Chaplin movie.The close-up on Meinert's hand after the girl has refused to shake it,sublimates her redemption.

The final scene when Thymiane meets again her former mate and her final rebellion:"I know the benefits of that house!"

Like very few silent movies,"Tagebuch" can grab today's audience at least as much as "Pandora's box" (aka "Loulou" aka "der büchse der Pandora").Both movies have a very dense screenplay full of twists and unexpected ends -Loulou's death in the former;Thymiane's rebellion in the latter).Both feature Louise Brooks ,who remains an attractive woman even by today's canons when so many silent screen actresses'charm -and actors' - seems outdated nowadays (think of Brigitte Helm -Maria in Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis").Her charisma was so strong that she did not have to speak to move us.That may account for her failure in the talkies.

Do not miss Pabst's anti-war "West front 1918" either.It compares favorably to Milestone's "All quiet on the western front" and Gance's "J'accuse".

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11 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
The Diary, 8 November 2005
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

There are two things about this that make it essential viewing. The first is obvious. Louise Brooks fills the camera like no one else in my experience. And like no one else probably could now that movies have filled out all the sensory space they can. And we have come to expect information in those channels.

For instance, can you imagine a movie today just showing people dancing? No story information, no bizarre or comic behavior to amuse us, just people dancing. This has three or four such scenes.

I'll leave it for others to speculate on how such an on screen presence happened to be possible, except to say that much must come from the nuance of the eye, all the things associated with the camera and its context. I pay attention particularly to placement and movement, here not obviously novel but intimate nonetheless.

What a woman! Between she and Clara Bow — these two women alone — we changed.

But the other reason I put this on my "must watch" list is because of the sheer virtuosity of the film-making.

Realize that the hardest thing for a filmmaker is to start. How do you begin? You have to create a world, a feel, a system of mechanics and fate. You have to create a situation with context and characters. You have to have a story with events and pull. All this you need to build in a couple minutes and do it in such a way that the viewer is not only fully familiar and comfortable but swept along, she begs for more.

Pay attention to the first few moments of this. If you haven't seen it dear reader, remember that this is a *silent* movie, that there is no rolling text to tell you what is happening, and there haven't been several months of previews that tell you the whole darn story.

In just a few minutes you learn:

It is christening day for Thymiane (whose name we learn) and as a gift from a live-in aunt she gets the diary from which we know what we see later will be drawn.

We learn that she is the daughter of a successful chemist who lives in an opulent house above the pharmacy. That below lives an assistant chemist who is obsessed by sex. We discover that she has a bossy set of relatives who turn a blind eye to her father's dalliances.

And that one of those dalliances impregnates her governess who then kills herself. Meanwhile, the downstairs chemist has designs on the young girl and makes the first entry in her diary.

The story is off.

I dare say that there is no other movie in existence that conveys this much information so compactly and so directly. The way it is done today is by reference to other movies. You enter today's movies with all sorts of tacit knowledge about other movies that is recalled and activated by codes.

Here, it is all done the old fashioned way, cinematically.

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The real "Diary" - now "Lost", 4 November 2006

Author: melvelvit-1 from NYC suburbs

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Louise Brooks is luminous in this rather trite tale of a young girl's ruination and regeneration. The plot line founders toward the end but, as a whole, "Diary Of A Lost Girl" is notable for its arresting visuals and set-piece sequences.

Unfortunately, we'll never see G.W. Pabst's original intent:

"The Diary Of A Lost Girl was based on the moralistic novel by Margarete Bohme... But the censors did not miss the point. They butchered Diary more brutally than Pandora. In the ending Pabst intended, Thymiane was to become the proprietress of her own high-class brothel, rejecting respectability in favor of the wealth and power that a rotten bourgeoisie could respect. But the censors insisted that Thymiane embrace precisely the kind of sentimental reformism that Pabst disdained, twisting the film into conformity with German middle-class values. Pabst capitulated because he had to coexist with them and because he would live to fight another day for such subsequent (and better) films as ...The Threepenny Opera... DOALG was a kind of sacrificial lamb, as its scenarist, Rudolf Leonhardt, affirms: 'Pabst's accommodating nature had already made him prepared to make two different endings -for vice, even involuntary vice, must not go rewarded. Where the censors had not forbidden passages beforehand, entire filmed sequences were cut without mercy later on...'"

I love what there is of it (especially the brothel & reformatory scenes), but I was never in the majority:

"But it was death, rather than immortality, that awaited DOALG at the box office upon its release... The influential critic Hans G. Lustig gave it a single withering paragraph in Der Tempel... No serious criticism of DOALG could take place until three decades later...Lost on most critics was the fact that Pabst's technique in DOALG was different from that of Pandora. Lotte Eisner, virtually alone, recognized a new, semi-documentary restraint: 'Pabst now seeks neither Expressionistic chiaroscuro nor Impressionistic glitter; and he seems less intoxicated than he was by the beauty of his actress."

Highly recommended!

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Louise Brooks And Sordid Storyline Keep You Interested, 4 October 2006

Author: Hal-900 from WA, USA

I was a really looking forward to seeing this production, but I was surprised to see that I was not particularly enamored with it. Pabst's direction is very generic but the material is fascinating enough to grab the viewer's attention. The film tackles a series of adult issues in a bold manner. Rape, pedophilia and prostitution are just a few things the movie handles in a candid way. There are no subtle insinuations here; everything is presented the way it is, without sugarcoating anything. I guess my main, and probably only valid complaint, is that the heroine of the story is such a passive character that I had problems connecting with her. The star of the film is the fascinating Louise Brooks, but her character does not allow her to show any real dramatic range. The camera is in love with Brooks, no doubt about that, but she lacks the fire of someone like Garbo; even Joan Crawford would shredded the movie to pieces with her great magnetism. I'm not sure if it is a narrative problem or an issue related to Brooks's dramatic abilities, but her character is a bit boring. Still, it is an interesting movie.

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7 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Pabst/Brooks' best collaboration, 2 September 2003
Author: ac947 from kent ohio

Who would have guessed that these two collaborated in a film superior to Pandora's Box. Pabst and Brooks were a rare combination indeed, and must serve as another decisive exception to the auteur theory. Having just viewed both, I think a case can be made that the Lost Girl film is actually superior to the admittedly better known film. How Krackhaeur could have ignored the value of these two films in his "Caligari to Hitler" book is indeed baffling. The scenes in the "foster" home are fascinating and may indeed say something about the authoritarian mindset of 20s Germany. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is another good example)

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
An excellent film with one of Louise Brooks best performances, 18 October 2006

Author: joshh76 (joshh76@hotmail.com) from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The comments submitted are from Josh76's Dad, Dan47 I found this film to be deeply moving. Louise Brooks portrays the innocent Thymiane with such pathos that I wanted to reach out to the screen and rescue her. Unlike most films from this period there is no rescue in "the nick of time". Events follow an inexorable nightmare pattern as Thymiane, the victim, is condemned to imprisonment after being raped and impregnated by her father's employer. Abandoned financially and emotionally by her selfish father she can only fall into prostitution after she escapes the home for wayward girls. I couldn't help being reminded of "The Magdalene Sisters", another film where girls are blamed for the lustful acts of their attackers and seducers. Louise Brooks expresses more with her eyes then most actors do with paragraphs of dialogue. Even during the giddiest parties in the brothel she expresses desperation, despair and regret with rare subtlety. Despite its' age and the lack of sound the film stands up well. The presentation is not overly sentimentalized, though the enduring "goodness" of the Thymiane and her eventual "redemption" might stretch the imagination. In an age where "human trafficking" is running rampant we could use an actress of such beauty, charisma, and sympathy to portray the continuing plight of girls and women driven into the sordid life of prostitution.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Much Better than Pandora's Box, 24 May 2005

Author: loza-1

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

In this film, Pabst lets Louise Brooks act in a way that is more suited to the classic silent style. The result is a better film than the much vaunted Pandora's Box. It is ironic that when rock group OMD performed their song "Pandora's Box" on TV (a song dedicated to Miss Brookes) the footage they showed was from this film and not "Pandora's Box!"

It is the story of an orphan who makes a tough journey from children's home to ladyship, whose final scene takes her back to the very children's home she escaped from.

Louise Brooks's performance is much more acceptable in this film, and shows a great degree of film mime ability.

I would also like to single out Andrei Engelmann for the superb performance in the final scene: you never know whether he recognises the lady as one of his escapees.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Sally Bowles Anyone?, 23 January 2006

Author: brocksilvey from United States

Liza Minelli's character in "Cabaret" (1972) looks so much like Louise Brooks that you have to wonder if Minelli didn't model her look after the famous silent film star.

"Diary of Lost Girl" puts the drama in melodrama. Brooks stars as a young innocent thing who's life goes a bad direction when she's introduced to every vice the world has to offer. Name a vice and it's in here: sex, booze, dance, gambling. It's like a public service message as broadcast by the Christian Coalition. It's a cautionary tale about the evils awaiting innocent souls, and it's pretty hard to take by the time the film has neared the two-hour mark. However, it's redeemed by a finale in which Brooks decides to devote her energies to helping other "lost" girls by truly understanding their plight, rather than cow them with moral fire and brimstone.

Brooks is beautiful, but she's not much of an actress, at least not as evidenced by this film. Her Thymian (what a name!) is a blank slate, and Brooks's reaction shots more often than not catch her staring at the camera with little or no expression on her face. Thymian is a girl who just lets things happen to her, so it's hard to muster up the requisite sympathy to really care about her plight. What's more interesting is the peripheral action always going on around her. The middle section of the film, which takes place in a home for wayward girls, captures some of the most entertainingly bizarre moments I've seen in a movie for a long time. The home is run by a butch dominatrix who leers lecherously at the girls while they eat soup and works herself into what appears to be a sexual frenzy when she forces them to perform nightly calisthenics (which consist of the girls flopping over at the waist and then standing up again quickly, over and over, like fish gasping for oxygen). There's also a looming tall bald man who looks like he could have auditioned for the role of Lurch, who we see playing the piano one minute and gripping young girls by the backs of their necks the next. The best scene in the film comes when the girls turn on these two and begin pounding on them to the beat of a drum, making one wonder why the girls didn't do this much sooner, since there are about twenty of them and only two of the caretakers.

People not familiar with pre-Code cinema (and European pre-Code cinema to boot) may be surprised at the adult subject matter in this film: nudie postcards, lesbian overtones, pre-marital sex, even a shot of a pregnant woman (gasp!). It's always a reminder of just how straight-laced movies became in the years shortly following the advent of sound.

"Diary of a Lost Girl" is longer than it needs to be and doesn't exactly take the subtlest approach in its storytelling, but then what silent film ever did? If you like silent films you will probably at least enjoy this one. If nothing else, it provides a nice introduction to Louise Brooks and the on-screen charisma that made her a star.

Grade: B

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Throws itself terribly out of control..., 30 November 2005

Author: Polaris_DiB from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A young, upperclass woman named Thymian is excised from her family when a combination of incidents including her father's affair with the housekeeper, the death of the governess, and her rape by her father's business partner resulting in impregnation causes the family as a whole to send her away (for various reasons, some of which are unknown) to a reformatory. The draconian actions of the reformatory cause her to run away with a young Count, but unfortunately he is penniless and they have nowhere to go, so she gets stuck in a brothel of sorts where she lives until circumstances bring her back to her family and eventually lead her to a new life and new identity, from which she learns compassion for the other "lost girls" of the world.

Technically, that's what it's about.

At least, that's what happens. The problem with this film is that Thymian is the only character with any motivation, and it's a slight and unfocused one at that. For the first half of the film, indeed, one at least can be forgiving to the film because the characters inherent (and physical) beauty at least provides some sort of motion to the storyline. Unfortunately, since the characters have no motivation, and since the director seems entirely unwilling to let anything tragic have its due in the world, the movie skips past what could possibly be a beautiful and tragic ending and continues for another hour or so on tangents without importance or design.

At first this discursiveness seems rather stunning and unexpected, but a quick look back over a few points of the first half of the film start revealing that indeed, it seems Pabst really didn't have a clear understanding of overaching tones, themes, motifs. He has a storyline and names for characters, but no personalities or plot. For instance, the name of this movie: DIARY of a Lost Girl. The beginning is quite clear and obvious the importance of the diary to the character of Thymian, but not only does it not sustain its direct duty to bring her some form of closure, revelation, or salvation, it also simply disappears after a certain point and is never heard of again.

Furthermore, the movie strives to close up all threads with an opportunistic idea that everything can work out, but it closes up threads that needn't be included or are even merely incidental in the story arch. I repeat: the characters lack motivation. Since the characters lack motivation, what are they supposed to do to win, or lose, or react to events? They have nowhere to go or expand, and thus the ending keeps getting further and further away.

Most distressing about watching this film is it's complete lack of understanding about tone. It goes to extremes that seem at first to show the incredible level of conformity, decadence, ignorance, or whatever, but eventually go to far and fail to make an organized statement. Little nods to lesbianism are included for no real reason whatsoever. And what about Thymian's tendency to pass out before being taken advantage of? If it's meant to show her lack of control over the situation, it's a very maudlin and over-indulgent attempt.

In fact, why does Thymian want to hide the identity of the father of her baby when she was quite clearly raped? Some rape victims tend to victimize themselves by claiming that they deserved it, but there's no hint, nod, or involvement of that dysfunction. Why does the mistress of the reformatory derive such pleasure at the exercise of the girls? There's no clear evidence to support that she's sadistic, lesbian, or any has any form of motivation besides the fact that showing her wild grinning face seems a good way to get a reaction from the audience. Why is the housekeeper turned stepmother so stern, and furthermore, why can't she seem to make any face other than her one stern one? Sometimes this film goes to lengths, also, to go further into depth about things that don't deserve such treatment. Most of the ending seems to be an attempt by the filmmakers to take control of the theme (which they don't have) by reintroducing arbitrary characters and involving them in entirely new plot lines that don't have any coherent or enthused meaning on the overall storyarch. Basically, as soon as the Count's son inexplicably kills himself, the movie becomes saturated with false pretensions towards positivity, endurance, and "love" without taking the time to admit that the entire movie has already ended.

From there, the whole thing begins to fall entirely out of control and gets worse and worse until roughly about the beach scene and beyond, which if by that point you're still paying attention and caring about where the characters are going, you're just going to be lead to one of the most antithetical climaxes in film history. Yes, the Count actually said that line, and yes, that's all you're left with.

--PolarisDiB

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