Made in the summer of 1929, Diary Of A Lost Girl tells the story of the fall and rise of Thymiane, an innocent 16 year old girl, played by Louise Brooks. It is based on a novel by Margarete Bohme. The film was produced by HOM films of Berlin which was owned by the film's director, G W Pabst. Such was his influence over Louise, she accepted a pay cut to come and work for him again.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst knew how to get the best from Brooks. He had previously directed her in Pandora's Box and she had no hesitation in obeying his command that she leave Paris, where she was passing the time at parties and nightclubs, and travel to Berlin to film Diary. Louise recollected in later years how Pabst said "You get on the train and come" and that was precisely what she did the very next day.

It is noteworthy that during filming, Pabst was accompanied by Leni Riefenstahl, who later went on to direct the infamous Nazi propaganda film "Triumph Of The Will". At this point in her career she was an actress, and according to Louise, not a very good one. In fact the filming of Diary was full of sexual undertones and jealousy. Louise had annoyed Pabst by not wishing to continue a brief fling they had embarked on a few months earlier in Paris and by being accompanied by a blond gentleman friend who she refered to as Eskie, that being a shortened version of his nickname "Eskimo". Louise's attraction to Sepp Allgeier, the film's cameraman, did not help matters either. So with Louise's jealousy over Leni Riefenstahl's attentions to Pabst being mirrored by his own jealousy of Eskie and Allgeier, filming must have been quite tense. In fact Louise relates in the Barry Paris bio how Pabst used her jealous gloom to get the look he wanted for a particular close up shot.

The central character in Diary Of A Lost Girl is Thymiane, the daughter of a respectable pharmacist. Seduced by her father's assistant Meinert, played by Fritz Rasp, she becomes pregnant and after they refuse to marry each other, she is forced to leave her baby with a midwife and is sent to a harsh reformatory. We can clearly see the hypocrisy of Thymiane's "respectable" family. Her father, far from being a paragon of morale virtue himself, has impregnated his housekeeper Elizabeth, who subsequently kills herself. It isn't even the first time he has behaved like this!

At the reformatory Thymiane keeps the "Diary" of the title. Life there is regimented, the girls are made to sew garments and even meals are eaten with strict timing and discipline as the headmistress, played by Valeska Gert swings her cane like a metronome. Showing thinly disguised lesbian tendencies, she clearly gets a sexual thrill from having so many girls under her authority. The girls exercise in gym kit whilst she bangs a gong, probably loving every minute of it. Gert's husband is played by the Russian actor Andrews Engelmann; tall and shaven headed, he exudes a powerful air of menace whenever he appears on the screen, at 6' 3" he towers over the diminutive Louise like a sexual predator.

Eventually, after the headmistress tries to confiscate her diary, Thymiane escapes accompanied by her friend Erika, played by Edith Meinhard. When she goes to reclaim her baby, Thymaine is told the child has died. Penniless and alone, with her uncaring father now remarried to Meta (Franziska Kinz) who certainly doesn't want her around, she ends up in a brothel. From at first being completely unaware of what happens there, she eventually goes on to find happiness and contentment in this most unlikely of places. However, a chance meeting leads to a tragic death which is destined to change Thymiane's life forever.

Louise Brooks gives an impressive performance as a 16 year old innocent, something that the 22 year old Brooks certainly was not! Dressed in white with a band of flowers in her hair, the effect could have looked somewhat contrived, but Brooks manages to carry it off. Thymiane never crosses the line from genuine innocence into irritating, unrealistic naivety. We do not feel we are looking at a woman in her twenties pretending to be a teenager. Contrast these early scenes with those in the brothel where Louise brilliantly portrays the erotic awakening of a young woman and we can see the full range of her talent.

Diary Of A Lost Girl is certainly not a film primarily about sex. It's a morality tale. However it is not the morals of Thymiane that are in question, it is those of the middle classes and their "respectability". That said, the sexual elements of the film are very striking and in one of them we see yet again how Pabst got the best from Louise Brooks, even going so far as to use real champagne for a scene where Thymiane is raffled in a nightclub to help a customer of the brothel who has money problems. The subsequent intoxication of Louise gave it a suitable air of hedonism.

I do feel Pabst has "shaped" reality somewhat. Thymiane is happiest in the brothel, where she can explore her own sexuality without repression in comfortable surroundings, but were German brothels really such pleasant environments as depicted in Diary? Frankly I'm inclined to doubt it. There is a scene in the film where one of the main characters commits suicide by hurling himself out of a window immediately after hearing some disappointing news. Is that what sane people really do? Probably not, but we must make allowances for dramatic licence and the need to tell a good story, however to 21st century viewers these scenes may jar somewhat. Would they have had the same effect on those watching the film in 1929? To be honest, I don't know.

Kenneth Tynan, in his introduction to "Lulu in Hollywood", describes the film's later parts as paying lip service to conventional values and the ending as lame. Indeed Brooks herself believed that Pabst lost interest in the film and gave it a "soft ending." That may well be, but personally I rather like the way things turn out. Perhaps Pabst did lose interest, but that didn't prevent him from producing a very good film. Could the ending have been more shocking? Yes, of course it could, but he had to deal with censors who would not have permitted him the luxury of giving the film a conclusion that would have caused an affront to 1920s conventional morality.

Pabst had in fact originally planned a completely different conclusion to the film which would see Thymiane running her own brothel, thus completely rejecting respectability in favour of the pursuit of money. Only by getting rich could she have any status in a corrupt society. However the censors would simply not tolerate an ending where a young girl turned her back on redemption to become a madam.

I believe Diary Of A Lost Girl to be every bit the equal of Pandora's Box. However, when released it had the misfortune to appear at the same time as the first "talkies" and it did not do well at the box office. The moviegoing public wanted sound and had little interest in the artistic virtues of Diary. Heavy censorship did not help the film in Europe and it was not released in America.

Described by Barry Paris in "Lulu In Hollywood" as "the pinnacle of a dying art form", this film has stood the -*test*-('") of time and outlived those early talkies that forced it into initial obscurity. Pabst could certainly be accused of repeating himself in the theme of sex and morality by filming Diary directly after Pandora's Box. But make no mistake, these are two very different films with two very different endings. The golden thread running through them both is Louise Brooks. I recommend you watch both of them and make up your own mind as to whether Pabst rehashed Pandora.

I hope this little taster will prompt you to watch Diary Of A Lost Girl, I believe you will enjoy it.