PRIX DE BEAUTE (1930) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Augusto Genina
Louise Brooks, Jean Bradin,
Georges Charlia, Gaston Jacquet
In her last starring role, Louise Brooks plays a French typist who enters a beauty contest and wins, incurring the wrath of her jealous fiancé. This would be a pretty good soap opera even without its enigmatic star - it's extremely well photographed - but Brooks makes it more. Trained in the revolutionary techniques of modern dance, Brooks was the first really modern movie actress. She looks as if she stepped off some city street straight onto the screen, and poses so naturally that the posing itself is practically invisible. Watching most other great film stars perform, you can sense them working at it. The illusion is an act of will. Brooks doesn't seem to be acting at all. The film's conclusion, in which her husband tracks her down and kills her in a screening room while her cinematic image flickers in the background, is eerie, not only as the climax to the story, but as a distorted reflection of Brooks' own life. After wrapping the picture in Paris, she went back to Hollywood, but never got another decent role. She worked sporadically for a few more years, in bit parts and B westerns, but as a significant force in movies, her career was over. She was 23.
