PANDORA'S BOX "A Centennary Tribute to Louise Brooks" Series October 14, 2006

$9
Bing Theater
live musical accompaniment
1929 b&w 110min Eng intertitles
Scr Joseph Fleisler, Georg Wilhelm Pabst
dir Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz

Weimar Germany before the crash: bustling Berlin streets, bawdy cabarets, sleek apartments, & sleazy bars form the urban maze through which the vivacious & beautiful Lulu, who is innocently devoted to pleasure without malice, charts a downward course. She goes from kept woman to showgirl to widow to murderess to streetwalker, seemingly oblivious to the scandal, suicide, & financial ruin she sows in her wake. In a legendary performance that is both intuitive & transparent, Louise Brooks lights up the screen, just as Lulu does for the dreary lives of the men who flutter around her flame. With a lithe physicality alien to the pantomime conventions of the silent era, Brooks projects a carnality that borders on the neurotic—her Lulu cries & faints one moment, & laughs & dances the next—but in her subtle facial expressions, we see that she understands Lulu’s sexual drives & needs. Brooks lets the anger & pain show, but never the self-pity.

Official Website: http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmListing.aspx#lb