Join us for a deep dive into night and the city, the characters and cabaret of Berlin in the late 1920s, including a young woman (played by the iconic bob-haired Louise Brooks) who we accompany as she finds her way through the dark and dangerous world.
Diary of a Lost Girl begins with the 16-year-old Thymian, daughter of a pharmacist, being given a diary as a first communion present, in which she will go on to record her life of shame and humiliation, betrayed by a succession of men and women. Her innocence ended after she is made pregnant, when she first records her experiences in a repressive reform school and then, having escaped, at a high-class brothel where she’s transformed from dowdy inmate into the stunning woman we know as Louise Brooks the film star.
Throughout it all, Brooks is an incredible, natural, modern presence. Her Thymian transcends her story, retaining her moral decency in a corrupt world. Director GW Pabst had already directed her in Pandora’s Box which outraged correct middle-class audiences in Germany (and everywhere!) on its release, and this film, set in Berlin towards the end of a period of social freedoms and cultural permissiveness (think Liza Minnelli in ‘Cabaret’) delivered much the same!
An extraordinary film, accompanied at the Palace by the extraordinary Lillian Henley.
