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Louise Brooks’s famous bobbed hairstyle guaranteed her eternal inimitability, its razor-sharp aesthetic a marker of her essence. G.W. Pabst understood this, which is why when Brooks’s doomed flapper from Pandora’s Box flees a courtroom after a murder conviction, she cuts her hair to become almost unidentifiable—to be like other women, except perhaps for the curly-blond gal pal who longs for her affections. (One sign of the film’s coolness is its refusal to waltz Alice Roberts into the celluloid closet.) It’s an act of desperate self-preservation in a film wickedly chockablock with exciting displays of amorous exaltation and domination.

This 1929 German silent drama is a stirring vision of the world gripped by a sinister moral vice—a nosedive into a carnal abyss of despair lined with visionary chiaroscuro sights and thorny mythological reference. With a voracious Lulu at the gilded controls, the vibrantly in-the-moment Pandora’s Box...

To celebrate the release of Pandora’s Box coming to Blu-Ray on 30th October we have not 1, not 2 but 3 Blu-Rays to give away!

Eureka Entertainment to release G. W. Pabst’s sordid melodrama Pandora’S Box, one of silent cinema’s great masterworks, starring Louise Brooks. Presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, from a new restoration as part of The Masters of Cinema Series. Available from 30 October 2023, the Limited-edition set (3000 copies only) will feature a Hardbound Slipcase & 60-page Collectors Book.

Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, Pandora’s Box tells the story of prostitute Lulu (Louise Brooks), a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu’s latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr Ludwig Schon, announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon’s son, Alwa,...

It’s Marlene Dietrich, before Josef von Sternberg and The Blue Angel — and much of her mystique is already present. This sophisticated German silent observes a precarious, dangerous love triangle. Two men are entranced by the same woman: one deserts his bride on their wedding night and the other may have killed to possess her. Neither seems to get what he wants, yet Dietrich’s ‘woman one longs for’ is not a scheming femme fatale … maybe. The fluid, very modern direction of Curtis Bernhardt will be a revelation — this obscure Marlene Dietrich starrer is a superior piece of filmcraft.

The Woman One Longs For

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1929 / B&w / 1:33 Silent Ap. / 78 min. / Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt / Street Date June 8, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Uno Henning, Fritz Kortner, Frida Richard, Oskar Sima, Karl Etlinger, Bruno Ziener, Edith Edwards.

Cinematography: Curt Courant, Hans Scheib

Art direction:...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Two of the 1940s Raymond Chandler adaptations, Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946) and Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944), are rightly considered classics. Hawks identified the key challenge of the first-person detective story: find a leading man interesting enough that the audience doesn't get bored of seeing him in every scene. Hawks hired Bogart.Dmytryk was lumbered with Dick Powell, but Powell stretched himself and Dmytryk did everything to make the surroundings interesting, even nightmarish.The third movie from the third major studio is Robert Montgomery...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

Joop van den Berg's 1929 poster for AtlanticE.A. Dupont achieved early fame for Varieté (1925), a grimly saucy slice of Weimar doom and spiciness, and followed it up with prestigious British productions Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly (1929), the latter starring Anna May Wong—but just as his career was on the upswing he fell prey to the advent of sound, producing a big-budget version of the Titanic disaster in English and German versions.Atlantic, or Atlantik, became something of a laughing-stock in Britain, owing to Dupont's unfortunate combination of Teutonic tendencies and technical trepidation. The actors were directed to communicate as slowly as possible, perhaps so that Dupont could follow what they were saying. His desire to inflect each syllable with suitable weight and portent robbed the film of any sense of urgency, despite it being set on a ship that starts sinking around twenty minutes in (none of the ninety-minute time-wasting...

Hitler's Madman, a WWII propaganda film, had a complex origin story: filmed shortly after the real events it depicts (the assassination of senior Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the subsequent massacre of the Czech town of Lidice in reprisal), the appearance of Fritz Lang's similarly-themed Hangmen Also Die! caused its release to be delayed and it also suffered a title change from the catchier Hitler's Hangman. On the plus side, the tiny independent production, shot in just a week, was acquired by MGM and given a bigger budget for re-shoots to enhance its production values. But Sirk ruefully admitted the new scenes actually weakened the film's Poverty Row sensibility, which gave it a slight documentary flavor which was useful.The Lang film is, I think, superior all round, but the two make interesting companions and Sirk's is tougher, in a way. Lang's movie, originally written by Brecht, attempts to build in a small victory,...

The Viennale is off and running through November 6 and, as Patrick Holzapfel notes at Twitch, there'll be "around 150 feature films and documentaries. Among the highlights are P'tit Quinquin by Bruno Dumont, Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, From What Is Before by Lav Diaz, Jauja by Lisandro Alonso, Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Hard to Be a God by Aleksei German or Pasolini by Abel Ferrara…. Further highlights are tributes to the actor Viggo Mortensen, the director Tariq Teguia, the late filmmaker Harun Farocki (who passed away sadly this summer), the work of Fritz Kortner and a special hommage to Jean-Luc Godard." » - David Hudson...

The Viennale is off and running through November 6 and, as Patrick Holzapfel notes at Twitch, there'll be "around 150 feature films and documentaries. Among the highlights are P'tit Quinquin by Bruno Dumont, Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, From What Is Before by Lav Diaz, Jauja by Lisandro Alonso, Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Hard to Be a God by Aleksei German or Pasolini by Abel Ferrara…. Further highlights are tributes to the actor Viggo Mortensen, the director Tariq Teguia, the late filmmaker Harun Farocki (who passed away sadly this summer), the work of Fritz Kortner and a special hommage to Jean-Luc Godard." » - David Hudson...

Somewhere in the Night

Written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Directed by Howard Dimsdale and Joseph L. Mankiewizc

USA, 1946

A man (John Hodiak) wakes up in a military hospital, cognizant of the fact that he has been in battle for the United States but entirely oblivious of who he is or where he lives. Only a few cryptic pieces of paper in his pocket inform him of his name George Taylor; that a woman now hates him; and that a good pal of his, Larry Cravat, wants to meet him in Los Angeles transfer a significant amount of saved up funds through a bank account. Thus begins George’s vertiginous journey into the City of Angels, where the clues as to his true identity sometimes add up whilst other times stir further confusion. By all accounts, there are some people who view the name Larry Cravat as either a threat, as in the case of Lt.

The second in a short series celebrating the films of the Pathé-Natan company, 1926-1934. 

Fyodore Otsep (Russia), also credited as Fjodor Ozep (Germany), Fedor Ozep (Canada) and Fédor Ozep (France) is probably best known as co-writer of sci-fi epic Aelita (1924) and director of Soviet classic Miss Mend (1926). His work in Europe and America is harder to see, and the whole lot is rarely grouped together for consideration as a whole, the curse of itinerant filmmakers like Dassin, Siodmak, even Ophüls.

To decide whether this is merely a quirk of film history, or a full-on case of major artistic neglect, simply watch this clip:

Amok (1934) is the third of Ozep's Pathé-Natan films, and the most baroque. It's based on a story by Stefan Zweig (Letter from an Unknown Woman) later filmed in Mexico with less fidelity but plenty of gusto. It's a very weird orientalist fever dream.

Jean Yonnel,...

Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Conrad Veidt on TCM: The Hands Of Orlac, Casablanca, Nazi Agent Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Above Suspicion (1943) A honeymooning couple are asked to spy on the Nazis in pre-war Europe. Dir: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Conrad Veidt. Bw-91 mins. 7:45 Am Contraband (1940) While held up in a British port, a Danish sea captain tussles with German spies. Dir: Michael Powell. Cast: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Hay Petrie. Bw-87 mins. 9:30 Am All Through The Night (1942) A criminal gang turns patriotic to track down a Nazi spy ring. Dir: Vincent Sherman. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne. Bw-107 mins. 11:30 Am Jew Suss (1934) A Jewish businessman using his wealth to benefit his people discovers he's not Jewish. Dir: Lothar Mendes. Cast: Conrad Veidt, Frank Vosper, Cedric Hardwicke. Bw-104 mins. 1:...