Diary of a Lost Girl

A radiant Louise Brooks from Diary of a Lost Girl, proof that some things never go out of style... I watched G.W. Pabst's great 1929 Silent drama earlier today and it struck me that the film has a particular Irish resonance to it, specifically when Louise Brooks' character Thymian haven fallen pregnant, is packed off to a correctional institution for "wayward" women, very much like the thousands of women that were banished to the Magdalene Laundries here in Ireland. It's ironic then that Pabst's film was most likely not seen in Ireland, had Diary and indeed Pandora's Box played here, censor interference would have left both films incomprehensible. Seeing it again today, it remains a remarkable film, it's tough and downbeat yet powerfully erotic and the film features a trio of striking looking villains - the vampiric Lang regular Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert whose jerky mechanical moments anticipate Elsa Lanchester's Bride, and the towering dome-headed Andrews Engelmann who might have had a terrific career at Universal's Horror unit had he headed west...