Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
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100% of critics liked it
(5 reviews) -
88% of users liked it
(1,911 ratings)
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… More 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
- Directed By
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst, G.W. Pabst
- Written By
- Rudolf Leonhardt
- Genres
- Drama, Art House & International, Classics
- In Theaters
- Jan 1, 1981 Limited
- Studio
- Kino
Critic Reviews
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Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
It's the brilliant performance by the radiantly beautiful Brooks that makes this otherwise forgettable soap opera story memorable.
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Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central
The Hollywood ideal corrupted by the deleterious social effects of the Third Reich remains one of the most haunting synergies in silent film.
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Cast
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Louise Brooks
as Thymiane Henning
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Fritz Rasp
as Meinert the Pharmacy Assistant
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André Roanne
as Count Osdorff
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Josef Ravensky
as Robert Henning
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Franziska Kinz
as Meta
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Edith Meinhard
as Erika
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Vera Pawlowa
as Aunt Frieda
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Arnold Korff
as The Elderly Count Osdorff
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Sig Arno
as A Guest
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Andrews Englemann
as Director of the Reform School
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Kurt Gerron
as Dr. Vitalis
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Valeska Gert
as His Wife
- Sylvia Torf
- Michael von Newlinsky
- Jaro Fuerth
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Sibylle Schmitz
as Elisabeth
- Josef Rovenský
- Joseph Rovensky
- Andrews Engelmann
- Sybille Schmitz