Lulu lives by her rules and other people's money, those who get close to Lulu's flame are scorched, except one...
Based on Franz Wederkind's 1904 play, German critics disliked it primarily for Pabst casting an American as Lulu!
Louise Brooks was a teenage dancer with Ruth St. Denis' dance company then, after being fired, on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies.
Signed to Paramount by Walter Wanger, they began an affair which ended when she became Charles Chaplin's mistress.
Good roles came quickly but so did a reputation for wild living and attitude.
Brooks discovered Pabst had offered her Lulu after she walked out on the studio over pay, Paramount didn't even bother telling her. Her acceptance cable arrived as Pabst was about to hire his second choice, Marlene Dietrich.
Originally re-cut by distributors to make it more upbeat, the original print was re-evaluated and praised in the 1950s.
Shelf or charity shop? 91 years on, Pabst's disturbing film remains a key work in German silent cinema so it's a keeper. Gloriously shot, the film lives and breaths because of Louise Brooks, a true screen icon. Her dance experience means Lulu seems to always be in motion, her laser-like focus when in close-up is breathtaking and in the film's climax she achieves a purity that is stunning. After a second film with Pabst, DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (which was also heavily censored) she returned to Hollywood where she was, in essence, blacklisted for her troublesome reputation. By 1938 her film career was over and the following decade brought depression, drink, even prostitution. But by the early 1950s, French critics reappraised her and she lived to see her performances acclaimed. There is much more to her than the razor bob haircut, now a pop culture reference for jazz-age femme fatales.
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