Thursday, January 02, 2025

At WEJB/NSU, we don’t just do murder; we do prostitution, too! See Louise Brooks, in her breakout role (before Pandora’s Box!), Margarete Böhme, Rudolf Leonhardt, and G.W. Pabst’s Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929), with Subtitles, Complete, Free, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at the WEJB/NSU Theater!


At WEJB/NSU, we don’t just do murder; we do prostitution, too! See Louise Brooks, in her breakout role (before Pandora’s Box!), Margarete Böhme, Rudolf Leonhardt, and G.W. Pabst’s Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929), with Subtitles, Complete, Free, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at the WEJB/NSU Theater!

By N.S.

When I saw this, it was on the CUNY/GSUC station (of my graduate school alma mater—I was indicted for a Ph.D., but walked on a plea bargain and time served). The tenured idiot host insisted that the acting was extraordinarily naturalistic.

The hell, it was. Each time a man carried the protagonist off to have sex with her, whether it was the big, assistant pharmacist who deflowered her (and knocked her up) at 14, or her first john as a prostitute in a brothel, she flopped on his shoulder limp, as if she had already climaxed.

To become a tenured college college professor nowadays, it’s just like with being a school teacher: You have to take an I.Q. and an intellectual integrity test. In each case, if you pass, you flunk, and if you flunk, you pass.

The protagonist is the daughter of a wealthy druggist. On the night after her confirmation, Her father’s huge assistant, carries her off to his bed, and knocks her up. The synopsis at the german imdb.com claims she refused to marry him, but my recollection was that he refused to marry her. She ends up in a school for wayward girls, breaks out, ends up in a brothel, and … that’s where my memory quits.




The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1896-1981:

The Haunted Castle: George Melies (1896)

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

The Wizard of Oz (1910);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Harry Carey and John “Jack” Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917), the First Feature-Length, “Cheyenne Harry” Western;

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), Starring and Directed by Victor Sjöström (Seastrom);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton’s One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno
(Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

Barrymore and Astor in Don Juan (1926);

When a Man Loves (1927), Starring “Jack” and Dolores Costello;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Garbo and Gilbert in Love (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

King Vidor’s The Crowd 1928;

Bessie Smith in St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

See Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst’s world-famous silent, Pandora’s Box (1929);

See Louise Brooks in Pabst's Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929);

See John Wayne, in His First Starring Role in an “A” Picture, Raoul Walsh’s Western Epic Talky, The Big Trail (1930)”;

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

"John Wayne Movie: See over 3 Hours of Foreign Legion Action! Classic Early 1930s Serial, The Three Musketeers;

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): The Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic;

John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), Starring Will Rogers, with Hattie McDaniel;

The Fighting Westerner (1935);

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946);

The Lethal Lure (1946);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948);

Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music;

Pierre Chenal and Richard Wright's Native Son (1951);

R.G. Springsteen and Montgomery Pittman’s Come Next Spring (1956);

Robert Wise and Abraham Polonsky’s Odds against Tomorrow (1959) Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966);

See Geraldine Page in Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory (1966, TV movie);

Lee Marvin as Sergeant Ryker (1963/1968); and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981) (exclusive review); The movie.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Was that the Jerry Carlson- hosted show that ran Saturday nights at 9 PM? He was awful-looking, but he did show a lot of offbeat "art house"-type movies that were hard to see at that time! Much appreciated in the days before everything was available on cable TV or home video.

-RM