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Diary of a Lost Girl



A masterwork of the German silent cinema whose reputation has only increased over time, Diary of a Lost Girl [Tagebuch einer Verlorenen] traces the journey of a young woman from the pit of despair to the moment of personal awakening. Directed with virtuoso flair by the great G. W. Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl represents the final pairing of the filmmaker with screen icon Louise Brooks, mere months after their first collaboration in the now-legendary Pandora's Box [Die Büchse der Pandora].

Brooks plays Thymian Henning, an unprepossessing young woman seduced by an unscrupulous and mercenary character employed at her father's pharmacy (played with gusto by Fritz Rasp, the degenerate villain of such Fritz Lang classics as Metropolis, Spione, and Frau im Mond). After Thymian gives birth to his child and rejects her family's expectations for marriage, the baby is stripped from her care, and Thymian enters a purgatorial reform school that seems less an institute of higher learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress's sadistic sexual fantasies.

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this glorious restoration of an iconic German film for the first time anywhere on Blu-ray.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New high-definition 1080p presentation of the film on the Blu-ray with a progressive encode on the DVD
• Original German intertitles with optional English subtitles
• Piano score by Javier Pérez de Aspeitia
• New and exclusive video essay, Naked on My Goat, by filmmaker and critic David Cairns (Blu-ray only)
• 48-PAGE BOOKLET including writing by Louise Brooks, Lotte Eisner, Louelle Interim, Craig Keller, and R. Dixon Smith
• Rare archival imagery

peerpee wrote:

davidhare wrote:Nick is there any news of any additional footage from the end of Tagebuch? I've mentioned elsewhere but will repeat even the very fine Gaumont version still ends abruptly, like the Kino. I can't believe this is the complete final sequence.

Of course I have no idea what the footage is, as I've never seen the Pabst in any other form.

Thanks David. Looking into it!

How do the DVDs end?

I recently saw this one in a 104 minute version at a local theatre (the only format in which I've seen the picture), so here's how that version ended:

Spoiler

Thymiane (Louise Brooks) returns to the old reformatory with her new beau, the elder Count Osdorff (Arnold Korff). There she spurns the societal ladies with whom she's travelling to redeem the honor of an old friend and companion ("I know the benefits of that house" the intertitles read). When those two leave, Osdorff is left in the rather uncomfortable position of waiting in the room amongst the societal women. Rather than wait it out, he gets up and moves to the door where the film's final message ("If there were only a little more love in the world, no girl would ever be lost" [something along those lines]) flashes upon the screen at the film's close.

I hope that helps.

You guys have a relationship with Fox, no? I'd like to see Howard Hawks's A Girl In Every Port, which stars Brooks, and only runs an hour in length, as a supplementary feature (literally). Probably not going to happen, but I'm throwing the idea out there all the same.

I'll be buying this disc, of course.

davidhare wrote:Many thanks! The Gaumont restoration ends abruptly with the two girls leaving the room. This sounds right to me.

Can you advise Nick of the source for the print?

Interesting. I'm not entirely sure of the source, but I'll make an inquiry and keep you updated.

I could swear that this is how the FWMS resto print ends-- I'm not home to look at it but I swear thats how the Kino disc ends, dave. It's the only "authorized", legal-to-show-without-lawsuit-threats-by-FWMS print out there, anyhow..

So I did a little digging. Unfortunately, the theatre doesn't offer much more than a seldom answered telephone number in the way of contact, but there are a few possibilites as to where they got the Diary of a Lost Girl print:

1. Their own silent film collection

2. The UCLA Film and Television archive ("We operate a film preservation laboratory in partnership with the UCLA Film Archive, and we own an important collection of silent films assembled by John Hampton" - from their website)

3. The Library of Congress

4. The George Eastman House

Next time I go down there, I'll ask if there's anyone I can talk to about the print source.

I should also note that the print itself was in very good quality, with the exception of perhaps one, maybe two reels, which showed some print damage and general lack of picture sharpness.

UPDATE: I talked to the programmer at the Stanford Theatre (where I first saw Diary of a Lost Girl), and while he wasn't 100% sure (he apparently programs, while someone else is in charge of contacting the distributor), he reckoned the print I saw was from George Eastman House. Their prints are all archival.

Hope that solves things. If you're really desperate for confirmation (that is, 100% certainty that it was from Eastman), the programmer gave me a number to call.

Art director Ernö Metzner, and actress Sybille Schmitz, worked together on the short film Police Report! the year before this film (Metzner as the film's director). It might make a nice extra...though I haven't seen it myself.

What A Disgrace wrote:Art director Ernö Metzner, and actress Sybille Schmitz, worked together on the short film Police Report! the year before this film (Metzner as the film's director). It might make a nice extra...though I haven't seen it myself.

No excuse for that! It's on Kino's essential Avant Garde set.

UBERFALL! With Fritz Lang's little old PopEye in the lead. Like the omnipresent Georg John, I love seeing these stock players appear from film to film, and picking them out in their occasionally wierd makeup (i e John in NIBELUNGEN).

no commentary, eh? :-(

There might be, it does state "....and much more"

Let's hope anyway.

HMV says 23 April on this, same date as Grey Gardens and Salesman.

Sparks wrote:HMV says 23 April on this, same date as Grey Gardens and Salesman.

Good, I`m really looking forward to this one.

HMV is wrong. We've just wrapped on SHOAH, finished article is in hand, and we're working on GREY GARDENS, SALESMAN, and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL now. DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is going to be May at the very earliest.

Will there be any other supplements apart from the booklet?

Play.com says May 21, with specs as followed.

- 16 Page Booklet featuring an essay from R. Dixon Smith
- Vintage photographs
- New, Progressive transfer from the F.W. Murnau Stiftung film restoration
- New Piano Score

Available for only 11.99 at amazon.

It's going to be a 40-page booklet.

denti alligator wrote:Available for only 11.99 at amazon.

And play, with free shipping.
Can't wait...

Only £9.99 when pre-ordered at HMV.

According to the specs posted by play.com, the announced 40-page booklet has now been shrunk to 16 pages, and they only name the Dixon essay, but not the other writings originally mentioned. Did they make a mistake, or have there been some last-minute changes?

Nick told me yesterday that it was still 40 pages.

Word of advice - don't believe a word you read on Play or Amazon.

I needed to supply provisional specs for the BFI's upcoming Å vankmajer box before everything had been locked into place - indeed, before we even knew whether it was going to be a truly complete edition! So while I always intended it to be called Jan Å vankmajer: The Complete Short Films, I had to send in a temporary title Jan Å vankmajer: The Short Films 1964-92 and hope they'd change it later. Amazon has done, but Play hasn't yet, and the specs and running time are equally vague.

I also didn't know how big the booklet was going to be until literally ten days ago - I knew it would be at least 24 pages, so that's what we told people, but it ended up at 56. I imagine Nick was in a similar situation.

Thanks, Michael, that sounds really good. Especially the bit about the 56-page Svankmayer booklet

Tommaso wrote:Thanks, Michael, that sounds really good. Especially the bit about the 56-page Svankmayer booklet

That was because I envisaged the notes at a rather cramped two per page, but the designer opted for one. No complaints about the end result, though!

And to get back on topic, I've been lucky enough to see the MoC Diary of a Lost Girl, and it gets a firm thumbs up from me - a very definite improvement on the Kino. The source print is as good as I've ever seen it (albeit far from perfect, but that's hardly MoC's fault), and I especially liked Javier Pérez de Aspeitia's unobtrusive but apposite piano score.