90% (2) Diary of a Lost Girl 79 min, [Drama] [Georg Wilhelm Pabst] [11 Apr 1930]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 80%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Actors: André Roanne, Fritz Rasp, Josef Rovenský, Louise Brooks
Writer: Margarete Böhme (novel), Rudolf Leonhardt
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: Thymiane is a beautiful young girl who is not having a storybook life. Her governess, Elizabeth, is thrown out of her home when she is pregnant, only to be later found drowned. That same day, her father already has a new governess named Meta. Meinert, downstairs druggist, takes advance of her and gets Thymiane pregnant. When she refuses to marry, her baby is taken from her and she is put into a strict girls reform school. When Count Osdorff is unable to get the family to take her back, he waits for her to escape. She escapes with a friend and the friend goes with the Count while she goes to see her baby. Thymiane finds that her baby is dead, and the Count has put both girls up at a brothel. When her father dies, Thymiane marries the Count and becomes a Countess, but her past and her hatred of Meta will come back to her.
Rotten Tomatoes: German filmmaker G.W. Pabst and Hollywood expatriate Louise Brooks re-team after the success of Pandora's Box for the silent film Diary of a Lost Girl. On the day of her confirmation, innocent young Thymiane Henning (Brooks) is given a lockable diary as a present. She's distraught because the housekeeper Elisabeth (Sibylle Schmitz) is leaving under curious circumstances and turns up presumably dead. Her duties are taken over by the conniving Meta (Franziska Kinz), who accepts the advances of Thymiane's pharmacist father (Josef Ravensky). Trying to understand Elisabeth's fate, Thymiane agrees to meet her father's assistant, Meinert (Fritz Rasp). She passes out, he carries her up to her room, and by the next scene she has borne a child by him. Meta snoops in Thymiane's diary and finds out it was Meinert's baby, so she suggests they get married. Thymiane refuses, so they throw her in a creepy reformatory for fallen women and leave her baby with a midwife. While in the reformatory, she meets Erika (Edith Meinhard), with whom she eventually escapes. To escape from poverty and homelessness, the girls then become nominal prostitutes in a brothel and are "sexually liberated." ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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86% (2) Pandora's Box 109 min, Not Rated, [Crime, Drama, Romance] [Georg Wilhelm Pabst] [22 Feb 1930]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 80%, Rotten Tomatoes: 92%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 nomination.
Actors: Carl Goetz, Francis Lederer, Fritz Kortner, Louise Brooks
Writer: Frank Wedekind (plays), Ladislaus Vajda (scenario)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: Lulu is a beautiful young woman who can seemingly work her charms on all of the men around her. She is currently being kept by the rich editor Dr. Ludwig Schön. She is just a plaything however and he is engaged to be married to Charlotte, a woman of his own class. He arranges for Lulu to appear in his son Alwa's musical revue and he too falls for all of her charms. When Dr. Schön and his fiancée go to the theater, Lulu ensures that he is put in a compromising situation and the elder Schön feels he now must marry her, knowing full well it will ruin his reputation. On his wedding day, Dr. Schön reaches his breaking point. His actions cost him his life however and Lulu is convicted of manslaughter. She escapes with the help of her old cronies but together they begin a downward spiral.
Rotten Tomatoes: A free-loving, status-climbing dancer murders her rich paramour, then takes up with a succession of other lovers, gradually descending to the streets as a hooker -- where she has the incredible misfortune to proposition Jack the Ripper! Pandora's Box is an acknowledged masterpiece of sensual imagery.
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78% (1) Beggars of Life 100 min, Not Rated, [Adventure, Drama] [William A. Wellman] [22 Sep 1928]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 78%, External Reviews
Actors: Blue Washington, Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen, Wallace Beery
Writer: Benjamin Glazer (adaptation), Jim Tully (book)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.
Rotten Tomatoes: Wallace Beery appeared in this silent film with intertitles, a dark drama of hobo life. Jim (Richard Arlen), a wanderer, comes upon young Nancy (Louise Brooks), who has just killed the guardian who was trying to rape her. Disguised as a boy, she takes off with Jim and rides the rails to a hobo camp led by Arkansas Snake (Robert Perry). When Oklahoma Red (Beery) takes over the camp, he begins to pursue Nancy, but before he can take her from Jim, the detectives show up to arrest her. He engineers a daring escape that nearly kills them all, but allows Nancy and Jim to get away -- but Red is still interested in her, and still following them; as resourceful as ever, he steals a car and some girl's clothes for Nancy, to throw the police off the trail, and tries to convince Jim to light out on his own. When he sees how much they actually love each other, however, he suddenly decides to let them go. But Red knows that the police won't give up their pursuit of an accused murderer, unless they think she's dead -- and he plans one last, very risky ruse to get the detectives to walk away.
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68% (1) A Girl in Every Port 78 min, PASSED, [Action, Adventure, Comedy] [Howard Hawks] [26 Feb 1928]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 68%, External Reviews
Actors: Louise Brooks, Maria Alba, Robert Armstrong, Victor McLaglen
Writer: Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness (screen story), Seton I. Miller (scenario), Sidney Lanfield (associate writer), Reggie Morris (associate writer), Malcolm Stuart Boylan (titles)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: N/A Country: USA
Plot: Two sailors with a rivalry over chasing women become friends. But when one decides to finally settle down, will this mysterious young women come between them?
Rotten Tomatoes: In this film, Spike and Salami are two sailors. Together, Spike and Salami travel all of the world in search of women and adventure and women. Their friendship is sorely tested when Spike decides to settle down to marry French fortune hunter Marie.
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62% (1) The Canary Murder Case 82 min, [Crime, Drama, Mystery] [Malcolm St. Clair, Frank Tuttle] [01 Jan 1929]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 62%, External Reviews
Actors: James Hall, Jean Arthur, Louise Brooks, William Powell
Writer: Albert S. Le Vino (adaptation), Herman J. Mankiewicz (titles), Florence Ryerson (screenplay), S.S. Van Dine (story and dialogue)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: A beautiful showgirl, name "the Canary" is a scheming nightclub singer. Blackmailing is her game and with that she ends up dead. But who killed "the Canary". All the suspects knew and were used by her and everyone had a motive to see her dead. The only witness to the crime has also been 'rubbed out'. Only one man, the keen, fascinating, debonair detective Philo Vance, would be able to figure out who is the killer.
Rotten Tomatoes: A blackmailing nightclub singer, who has made a habit of blackmailing her well-to-do lovers, is found murdered -- necessitating the intervention of sleuth-extraordinaire Phil Vance. Rumored to have been the downfall of star Louise Brooks when it was converted from silent film to talkie with her voice dubbed by another.
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61% (1) Empty Saddles 67 min, [Western] [Lesley Selander] [20 Dec 1936]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 61%, External Reviews
Actors: Buck Jones, Charles Middleton, Harvey Clark, Louise Brooks
Writer: Frances Guihan (screenplay), Cherry Wilson (story)
External Links: Wikipedia IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Buck runs into trouble when he buys a deserted cattle ranch that he turns into a dude ranch. To put on a show for the dudes, he sends his men after a nearby sheep herd with blanks in their guns. They are met with real bullets and one man is wounded. Then he learns that Boots, who helped him start the ranch, has been kidnaped and he heads out after her.
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