LOUISE BROOKS (1986) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Richard Leacock, Charles Chabot
A documentary from the BBC's Arena series, about the recklessly alluring silent star whose place in cinema history and popular culture has long transcended her brief career. Brooks made only a handful of notable films, most famously "Pandora's Box" (1928), whose hedonistic, self-destructive heroine eerily mirrors Brooks herself. In interview footage shot years later, Brooks claims she didn't know what she was doing when she acted, but she was naturally good at it, and her work stands out in the silent era for its instinctive minimalism. Her career collapsed with the advent of sound films, not because she couldn't act in them, but because she had burned too many bridges in Hollywood. By the 1950s, she was living in obscurity and alcoholic squalor when she was rediscovered, moved to Rochester, New York, and embarked on a second career writing about movies. She died at 78 in 1985, a year before this film aired on TV. Linda Hunt does Brooks' voice here, reading from her essay collection "Lulu In Hollywood".
