Diary of a Lost Girl

The daughter (Louise Brooks) of a pharmacist is raped by her father's assistant and is sent away to a medieval reformatory and then a whorehouse before receiving her inheritance and achieving her belated redemption. Daring and still ribald, G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl is consummately directed (the reformatory scenes are virtuosic) with impeccable black and white cinematography and a surprising lack of intertitles.A beautiful Brooks commands out sympathy.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Man with a Movie Camera

Shot in several Russian cities, Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera is an unabashedly experimental film with two goals in mind: to capture the day-to-day activities of the people and demonstrate a vast array of camera techniques at the same time. MWAMC sparked my interest when it skyrocketed into the top ten of the esteemed, most recent Sight and Sound Greatest Films Poll and I don't really have anything else to add other than seeing this hypnotic, seemingly impossibly compiled masterwork is a once in a lifetime gem.

Un Chien Andalou

"Un Chien Andalou" was the brainchild of Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel and artist Salvador Dali and is the highly influential harbinger of surrealist filmmaking. Designed to shock, the twenty minute short is constructed like a nightmare, featuring illogical, nonlinear, and now famous imagery, which includes a man with ants on his hands and the jarring eyeball slashing scene. Even its title has no significance or relevance towards the plot. From subsequent short films and music videos, through low-budget and experimental films, and up unto the films of David Lynch and the like, you can see this short's weird and immeasurable influence.

Pandora's Box

In the late 19th Century, a beautiful but naive young woman flaunts her sexuality and inspires desire, jealousy, and even violence in the men around. After cornering an older doctor into marrying her, she galavants with another man on their wedding night and as he waves a gun around in a fit of rage, he somehow falls dead by her hand. After being found guilty and fleeing from justice, the young woman and the doctor's soon make their way around Europe and wind up impoverished on the streets of London where the young woman meets her fate with a notorious figure from history. Pandora's Box was directed by the legendary German director G.W. Pabst and was a silent film that came out in 1929 well into the talking period. Still, the film held power and captivated audiences due to the wonderful direction and the crisp use of black and white, the beauty and acting ability of Louise Brooks, as well the controversial nature of the film which was rare in those days and caused a stir. Pandora's Box is a wonderful looking film of a tragic character that would enthrall anyone who could get passed the fact that they were watching a silent film.