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Too much of everything

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A wonderful surprise! I've always heard that Louise Brooks' follow-up to her two star-making hits with G.W. Pabst was a pleasant but inconsequential swan song. I thought it was very good, with an absolutely brilliant performance by Brooks. Co-written by Pabst and Rene Clair, this is basically a silent movie with overdubbed sound. Thus, the director is able to avoid the stodginess that comes with early sound filmmaking. He uses a very intimate, fluid style with the camera drifting through crowds to discover the beautiful Ms. Brooks' face. The one big problem the film has is that Brooks' love interest (Georges Charlia) is so totally unworthy of Brooks from the start that you can never come close to sympathizing with him. But that's not that important, really. Brooks plays Charlia's fiancée. He forbids her from entering the Miss France contest, but she's already done so. When she wins the opportunity to compete for Miss Europe, she chooses to disobey him. When she wins the competition, the fame and male attention drives her back to Charlia. But poor, married life soon seems much worse to her. The film is extremely worthwhile just for the expressions of Brooks' face alone. Though she has words, as dubbed in by a French actress, she doesn't need them. Her smiles seem created by a filmmaking Leonardo, and her pains are ours. Lulu could never have survived in the talkies (and I've seen the proof, a short film she made with Roscoe Arbuckle shortly after this one), and perhaps the loss of Brooks is the greatest of the talking picture era.

BEAUTY PRIZE (Augusto Genina - France 1930).Louise Brooks' last starring role in a feature, and her only film made in France. It's the story of Lucienne, a high-spirited Parisian typist who leads a mundane life with her fiancé, André, and a number of friends. While André indeed loves Lucienne, he has conventional expectations for their future together. When the Miss Europa beauty contest comes to town, he warns her to "not even dream" of entering it. Lucienne ignores his advice, and from there on, she struggles for independence and happiness, but André is overcome with jealous rage...I just watched "Prix de Beauté" in the sound version on the Kino Video DVD-release. The film was shot as a silent and Louise Brooks voice was badly dubbed by a French actress. The post-doctoring of this silent film into a talkie was badly done in the first place, and, on top of it, the transfer to the DVD is pretty shabby as well. Sometimes too light, then too dark, too fast, too slow. It's a mess. A mediocre film that might have worked as a silent but is no comparison to earlier films Louise Brooks made with G. W Pabst, "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a lost Girl." I watched this for the obvious reason of Louise Brook's last starring role, but it's only worth it for Brooks-aficionados or completists. Watch the silent version or turn of the sound, and make the best of Louise Brooks' intoxicating presence. The five stars are hers.Camera Obscura --- 5/10

It is often only after years pass that we can look back and see those stars who are truly stars. As that French film critic, whose name escapes me, said: "There is no Garbo. There is no Dietrich. There is only Louise Brooks"; and there is, thank heavens! Louise Brooks! This is the third of her European masterpieces. But it is also an exceptional film for being one, if not the, first French talkie, for following a script written by famed René Clair, for reportedly being finished (the direction, that is) by Georg Pabst, and for incorporating the voice of Edith Piaf before she was well known! So much talent working on and in a film, how couldn't it turn out to be a masterpiece?! And that's what this film is. It's a shame Louise Brooks was blackballed by Hollywood when she came back to the States--so much talent cast so arrogantly by the wayside! In the film, in addition to getting to watch Louise Brooks in action, it's great to see pictures of Paris ca. 1930 and to hear Piaf's young voice. I never get tired of this film!

I just saw MoMA's restored print of the silent version of Prix de Beaute. FAR better than the sound version, which is badly post-synched, shorter, and poorly paced. Bravo to the crew of restorationists who've given us back this fine film! (Trivia: The contract that Lucienne receives from the movie studio says on its letterhead, "Films, silent and talking" - an indication of how some studios were still hedging their bets in 1929-30.)Brooks' performance is very much of a piece with her work in the Pabst films, but takes it in some interesting new directions - whereas Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl are about the demimonde, Prix de Beaute is about a humble young woman's introduction to the bright, shiny new world of the media, modern technology, and the fame machine that they created.The collaboration of Pabst and Rene Clair on the screenplay is every bit as intriguing as it sounds. The first half, centering on Lucienne and her friends at the newspaper (she's a typist, her beau a linotype operator), is the Clair part - showing a fascination with recording equipment, movies, and the way the media manufactures icons. There's a sense optimism and a tremendous vigor to the life of working Paris portrayed here.The second half is the Pabst part, where everything turns dark as Lucienne's fairy tale as a beauty queen ends and she faces life as a working class housewife. She makes her escape only to have that life catch up with her. The ending is unforgettable, forcing the viewer to consider the ways that illusion and reality become confused in modern life, sometimes tragically. Clear through, the film shows a fine sense of class distinctions - how modern life can break them down and the traps they still set. Aside from Pabst's and Clair's own films, Prix de Beaute calls to mind Dreiser's novels, particularly An American Dream and Sister Carrie. Sunset Boulevard is anticipated as well. Makes one regret all the more American studios' indifference to Brooks - there was so much she could have done with any number of classic American roles.Brooks' work here is easily as good as her performances in the Pabst films, and Mate's and Nee's cinematography renders her stunning to look at. What a supremely expressive face! Too bad that this would be her last great film - not a full-blown classic, but a real gem.