Film Forum

Germany, 1929
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer
Music by Peer Raben
Approx. 141 min. DCP Restoration.

Sex in the City — Weimar Berlin: in the wake of Louise Brooks’ patent leather-bobbed Lulu, men set up sleek Deco love nests, ruin themselves gambling, and commit both murder and suicide, as she moves from kept woman, showgirl, Lesbian love interest, widow, convicted criminal, fugitive, and possible sex slave; amid a bustling backdrop of life in post-war, pre-Hitler Germany. Pabst’s adaptation of the Wedekind plays plucked Brooks from a waning career as Hollywood flapper to European art film goddess. One of the last masterpieces of the cinema’s most exciting era — with Brooks’ Lulu taking her place as one of the screen’s most enduring creations. Orchestral musical score composed by Peer Raben.

Restored from the best surviving 35mm elements at Haghefilm Conservation under the supervision of the Deutsche Kinemathek, with the cooperation of George Eastman Museum, and the collaboration of the Cinémathèque Française, Cineteca di Bologna, Czech Film Archive, and Gosfilmofond

Presented with support from the R.G. Rifkind Foundation Endowment for Queer Cinema

A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

Reviews

“The archetype of voracious destructive women.”
– Pauline Kael

“ONE OF THE MOST COMPLETE, ECSTATIC, IMPETUOUS AND RECKLESS PERFORMANCES ANYONE HAD EVER GIVEN ON SCREEN! [Brooks] makes Marlene Dietrich in THE BLUE ANGEL seem coy and calculated… Brooks is a flame fluttering in the wind of her own breath. She is danger as it had not been seen or felt before.”
– David Thomson, Moments That Made the Movies