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Purely Joyful Movie!

A Disappointing Continuation

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Lulu (Louise Brooks) works as a typist and is missing something in her life. She enters a Miss France contest against the wishes of her boyfriend Andre (Georges Charlia) and she wins. She sets off for the Miss Europe title leaving her boyfriend behind. She wins again but returns home to Andre because he has asked her to. Once back together, her life becomes mundane again so one night she writes a note to him and leaves to experience the fame that is waiting for her as Miss Europe. Andre follows her.....This film is a silent film with a piano music-track all the way through. It is also sped-up in parts so at times everything seems too fast. Limited dialogue has been added on afterwards and it is very phony. The cast are alright bearing in mind that it is a silent film. The best part of the film comes at the end but the story goes on a little too long. After watching this, I'm not really sure what the big deal was over the looks of Louise Brooks - she has a terrible haircut that makes her face look fat. The film has a memorable ending that lends itself to another viewing.

Beauty prizes became a staple of many a municipality in the decade following the end of the Great War - perhaps they filled a gap left by many of the old throne and altar ceremonies of the ancien regime states that fell in 1918. In fact this beauty prize was set somewhere in northern Spain in 1930, when the Bourbons' were still in charge (just). We get a few brief glimpses of the girls on display, but I am at a loss to know what all the fuss was about.Opinion seems to be divided as to the merits of this film. That might be because different viewers have been seeing different versions. The one I saw (at London's National Film Theatre) was the silent version, but someone (I think the pianist, Stephen Horne) had interpolated a sound recording at the very end. It was a scratchy, haunting Edith Piaf. By this time Mr Horne had stopped playing. Lucienne Garnier (Louise Brooks) had stopped breathing, and the audience was left with no sound but that of Piaf as, on the screen, the occupants of a private cinema rushed about the body of Brooks beneath the movement of her recorded screen test. I don't know whether I have explained this well enough, but for me it was the best ending that I had seen (of a silent film) since I watched Anthony Asquith's "Shooting Stars" several years ago.The screenplay, by director Augusto Genina (and colleagues) seldom rises above the level of a soap opera, but this is beside the point. Having 'sold' Brooks to German audiences, G. W. Pabst (in league with Rene Clair) wished to do the same to the French. As 1930 was the end of the road for silent cinema - and as Brooks was no linguist - Pabst and Clair had a very narrow window in which to make a profit on Brooks. It didn't really work - French audiences were not quite moved, and Brooks was forced back to America where her reputation as a team player was, to put it mildly, low.Genina has produced a fine, naturalistic picture, on a subject well suited to his cosmopolitanism. The men in it (Georges Charlia as her dull and possessive fiancée, Andre; Yves Glad as a predatory, blacked up maharajah; Bandini as a randy White Russian playboy-prince) are almost incidental. They are simply walk-on characters that are required to give the film some momentum. For this is almost entirely about Brooks. Henri Langlois aptly likened the film to a lighthouse that only illuminates the audience when Brooks appears on screen, and then relapses into darkness. There are also some interesting shots of Parisians going about their business.Brooks was seldom sober enough to appreciate how effective she was in this film. Her deportment betrays no awareness that this was her evening. Her cinematic career after 1930 was to be tragic.

With lots of sunshine, gauzy light and shadow filtering through windows and into rooms, tracking shots moving through crowds with hand-held camera, quick-paced editing and extreme close-ups here and there, the photography is the thing in this interesting, artistically done film.The plot of this film starts out as a bit of fluff about a beauty contest. The film begins on a warm Sunday at the local swimming pool, where we meet the lovely Lucienne aka Lulu (played by Louise Brooks) - a bit of a show-off in front of the gawking men by poolside, she soon decides to enter herself to represent France in the Miss Europe beauty contest, much to the chagrin of her very jealous, stick-in-the-mud fiancé (a pretty annoying fellow, really). Strutting down the runway the ten contestants display themselves in swimsuits, while the winner is chosen as the contestant who receives the longest applause (I was wondering, couldn't the girls just walk slower to prolong their length of time - and thus applause - on the catwalk?!). Lulu is soon being chased by a Prince and a Maharaja, but her hot-headed beau doesn't like the attentions paid to her by other men or her adoring public, for that matter (I guess he just wants her in his house, cooking his meals, and staying out of sight, eh?!).Louise Brooks is beautiful and charming, her presence helps enhance this film, but it's really the way it is photographed that held my interest the most. A bit distracting is the odd dubbed sound, which is a bit off. The print on this version looked very clear and full of nice contrast though. Watching this I just tried to overlook the sound problems and watch the film visually, and I found the movie to be excellent, well worth seeing.

Louise Brooks gives a wonderful performance in this well-made French melodrama. She plays a typist named Lucienne who, despite being in love with a man named Andre, dreams of rising above her position in life. She sees opportunity in a beauty contest for Miss Europe, but Andre is furious when he discovers that she's entered, then demands that she withdraw. She tries to take back her entry only to discover that she's already been chosen as Miss France and will now go on to the main pageant.This is a story of love, loss and decision played out to its passionate end. The movie is very energetically filmed by director Augusto Genina and cinema tographers Rudolf Mate and Louis Nee. The filming style is more like modern movies than the Hollywood flicks of the '30s, and shows the different style employed by Europeans. There are many fast cuts and traveling shots, mostly done with great skill and verve. The high energy of the movie's first third dwindles a bit in the middle but picks up again in the last 15 minutes.The performances were very good by all the principals, but that of Louise Brooks is especially memorable. Louise leans heavily on her silent screen skills even though this is a talkie, but because her silent style had a surprisingly contemporary, understated feel, she makes the transition to talkies very well. The long early scene at the fair was especially poignant as Louise used her remarkably expressive eyes to convey her growing sense of misery and alienation, of being trapped in a life she no longer wants. I doubt it's ever been done better.The film builds to a superb finale, artfully shot, powerful and stylish. This is really some of the best stuff of the early days of film. And the tragic storyline only underscores the greater tragedy that this is the final starring role for Louise Brooks. She wasn't just a great beauty who looked fantastic in a swimsuit, she really was a major acting talent who basically threw it all away. We are all the poorer for that.This movie is less well known than her German films with G.W. Pabst, but I think it's a better one. I think this crew is just better at storytelling than Pabst, and while Prix de Beaute may lack the deep moral complexity of the Pabst films, it's much easier to follow and is overall a more streamlined, focused piece of work. And it doesn't hurt that Louise's singing parts are done by Edith Piaf, either.Bottom line, this is a classic Louise Brooks film well worth looking for.