Diary of a Lost Girl (German: Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) is a 1929 silent film directed by G. W. Pabst and starring American silent star Louise Brooks.
I have been conducting research prior to writing a novella which features Ms. Brooks in her later years. I consider her to be the most enigmatic silent screen actor of her generation. And other than Clara Bow, probably the most iconic. She bucked the burgeoning Hollywood system and paid the price for it, but movies like this and Pandora's Box cement her as one of the greats. Her later life is shrouded in mystery. The almost three decades of hermit life seemed to give people the false impression that she was lonely. But by all accounts she was very self contained, and lived her life with a great deal of motivation, especially in her philosophical studies and scholarly pursuits, and of course her emergence as an amazing writer with a flawless memory for detail. She was not only beautiful up to the last, but had a voracious mind, and a soul that was preparing for the next part of her journey. An amazing person who will be missed by many, and should be celebrated by the Academy with a lifetime achievement award.
The first time I saw this movie was years ago at Brown Hall on the campus of Washington University. Big screen, I was captivated by her screen presence and performance. There just are no stars that compare to her these days.
Louise Brookes was stunning in film! Her acting was pure genius especially considering the times! It’s so sad her life after only a short time of “fame” was so tragic Very good film but very depressing
I saw the shortened version of this film many years ago on television. As one might imagine, they would have to cut quite a lot to get it past the censors for television. I am glad to have the opportunity to see the entire film. Thank you, The Vintage Audio Life!
Louise Brooks was a really great actress even though, apparently, she was difficult to work with and didn't care much for it which is ironic, because she was so naturally good at it.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I am a huge Louise Brooks fan, she was such an underrated actress at the time, watching this, i honestly don't know why.
Thank you so much for uploading this! Louise brooks retired to my city Rochester, which I only recently discovered, so I’m in the process of watching her top films!
It is a great film, but tragic in parts. I looked up the cast to see if I'd seen any of them in other films, and one caught my eye- Edith Meinhard (I believe is the name). I saw the year she was born, with no date of death and was surprised because she'd be well over 100 years old, and it could be possible, but highly improbable. I went on to read that she was never seen past a certain date, when she was working on a film in Germany in WWII, and the Allies bombed the studio where she was. It's another tragic story without closure in a sense. She's just kind of stuck in an historical limbo of sorts. Seems sad.
Of course, Louise Brooks was the star of this movie but do not forget the inimitable Fritz Rasp as Meinert. He also appeared in Fritz Lang´s Metropolis as "Der Schmale".
Hello, Vintage Audio Life, Do you know anything about the silent film of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, a Russian production made in 1915, which was the first film version of the book? There wasn't much of an article in Wikipedia about the film, just a stub. I gather that there's no surviving print of the film. Judging from the year, the film must have been made to encourage patriotism in the first year of the Great War and was lost or destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution. I'm fascinated with the story. Oddly enough, I've seen every film version, but never read the book. If you have any more information about the film, please let me know. Thank you, Phillip Jones.
