Watch Diary of a Lost Girl For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Great Film overall

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It isn't difficult to see why Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl caused a bit of a headache for the censors back in 1929. Even for a movie made during the Weimar Republic era, a revolutionary time for cinema when directors were consistently pushing the boundaries with controversial tales of debauchery and Germany's seedy underbelly, the themes and social insight feel unnervingly modern. Teaming up once again with his muse Louise Brooks, the Kansas-born starlet plays Thymian, the naive daughter of a wealthy pharmacist who, in the opening scene, watches their maid leave the family home in shame when Thymian's father (Josef Rovensky) gets her pregnant.Although it's clear to the audience, Thymian is puzzled as to why the girl has left. Her father's assistant, the creepy and much older Meinert (Fritz Rasp), invites her to the pharmacy that night on the promise to tell her everything, but instead takes advantage of the young girl and gets her pregnant. When the baby arrives, Thymian refuses to reveal who the father is but her family learn the truth from her diary, and insist that the two marry to avoid damage to the family's reputation. When she refuses, Thymian's baby is taken from her and she is packed off to a reformatory watched over by the intimidating director (Andrews Engelmann) and his tyrannical wife (Valeska Gert). After rebelling against the school, Thymian and a friend escape and join a brothel,Like many films made during the Weimar era, Diary of a Lost Girl depicts the decay in almost every aspect of German society at the time. The lives of the rich are stripped bare, and their motivations are heavily questioned when the family send Thymian away not with her 'rehabilitation' in mind, but simply to save face. The reformatory itself is a cold and bleak place, where the director's wife bangs a rhythm for the inhabitants to rigidly eat their soup too. They are less concerned with helping the girls fit back into the society that has failed them, and more about satisfying their own sadistic desires. In one particularly effective close-up, the wife seems to be achieving some sort of sexual gratification from her monstrous behaviour.The one place Thymian feels accepted on any sort of level is the brothel, a place where she can be herself without any kind of judgement or fear of social exile. While Thymian can at times be frustratingly naive and swoonish whenever she finds herself in the arms of a man, Louise Brooks delivers a tour de force performance that helps the audience maintain sympathy for her put-upon character, even when the film is at its most melodramatic. Even though the film is now 87 years old, Brooks's acting feels completely modern. Where most silent actors switch between rigid and operatic in their performances, Brooks is naturalistic and subtle, making it clear just why Pabst was so eager to work with her again after Pandora's Box, made the same year.

Thymian (Louise Brooks), the naive daughter of pharmacist Robert Henning (Josef Rovenský), is puzzled when their housekeeper (Sybille Schmitz) leaves suddenly on the day of Thymian's confirmation. Her body is brought to the pharmacy later that day, an apparent suicide by drowning.What we have here is a film that features sexual assault, unwanted children, prostitution and an amazing beard... all in the 1920s. This seems to go above and beyond what censors in those days would tolerate (but maybe Germany has different standards).I definitely need to watch this again... I did not give it my full attention, and being a silent film, I may have missed some important stuff.

The second G. W. Pabst/Louise Brooks collaboration comes close to equaling its predecessor in terms of depicting a world in moral decay through the plight of a fallen woman. Brooks' acting is slightly weaker at the beginning of the film, where she struggles to portray her character as a naive youngster. She becomes far more convincing as the film progresses and her character grows.As with Pandora's Box, there is a somewhat lurid atmosphere to this film, with each major character acting in their own, sometimes depraved, self-interest. For instance, one of the overseers at the reformatory confiscates a girl's lipstick, only to apply it to his own lips when he is back in his office. As with Pandora's Box, it is tempting to read this as symbolic of the decadent moral climate of Weimar Berlin. The general theme of rising and falling fortunes, sometimes due to one's own actions and sometimes due to events beyond one's control must have spoken to Depression-era audiences, though.The diary features prominently as a device early in the film but is forgotten towards the end. Perhaps, as Brooks' character has grown, she no longer feels she needs it but this is not depicted clearly. Rather, it seems to have simply been forgotten.The Kino edition of this film has a beautiful, very moving score that fits the scenes incredibly well. In fact, it is the best I have heard for any silent film.Ultimately, this film is on a par with Pandora's Box. Both are well-executed melodramas that reflect the seediness and decadence of the era and Brooks' acting is refreshingly modern in each.

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) *** (out of 4) Fairly raw German silent from director G.W. Pabst. A young woman (Louise Brooks) is raped and is eventually thrown out of her house when she has a baby. From here on the girl goes to a reform school, becomes a whore but will she find redemption? I was somewhat letdown by the film since I felt it did have a few flaws. I thought the men characters were really one sided and the second half of the film drags somewhat but there are certainly more positives than negatives. Brooks is terrific in the lead role and does a great job at showing off the virginal younger girl and the eventual sluttish, if mature, older woman. There's a scene where she's working and her father notices her. Within the same scene we see Brooks "slut" slide melt away into that virginal girl we saw at the end of the film in some of the best acting I've seen. The mood and atmosphere is very strong at the start of the film and the morality ending actually works quite nicely.