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The title's mythological invocation is a jest soon recognized by Zoe Akins, The Greeks Had a Word for It. Wedekind's Lulu but also Coleridge's Geraldine and Wilde's Salome, all rolled into Louise Brooks as the Jazz Age sprite in Weimar Germany. The showgirl is blithely kept by the engaged newspaper publisher (Fritz Kortner) whose son (Francis Lederer) is putting together a cabaret revue, the backstage whirl of movable sets and revolving costumes is unmistakably emulated in Citizen Kane. "One doesn't marry such women," the tycoon is forced to change his mind after getting caught in flagrante with his mistress, an electric moment signed by the victorious smile the wanton flashes the scandalized fiancée. Bridal whites and mourning blacks, the enthralling gaze that stops even the ponderous prosecutor in his tracks as he quotes the ancient gods in the courtroom. "Just one thing, my boy: Beware of that woman!" An astonishing carnal fever, where G.W. Pabst's analytical urbanity finds its ideal subject in the instinctive allure and gleaming bob of an American adventuress. Sapphic countess (Alice Roberts) and brawny trapezist (Krafft-Raschig), the gnomish codger (Carl Goetz) perpetually in tow, "my first... patron." Fluctuating fortunes at the floating gambling den, reward money for the fugitive versus an offer for the Cairo bordello. ("He's acting like he wants to buy me.") The trail of ruined suitors leads to London, a sorrowful Ripper (Gustav Diessl) awaits in the fog with erect blade for an unwise gesture of generosity. Innocence and guile, enchantment and danger, Rousseau's "fatale beauté" incarnated by Brooks as she moves like a drop of mercury through the Teutonic dreamscape. Eros and Thanatos collide in their climactic embrace, the decrepit father-pimp meanwhile relishes one last Christmas pudding. Seberg and Godard recreate the intellectual-sensual explosion three decades later in À bout de souffle, one cinematic turning point recognizes another. Cinematography by Günther Krampf. With Daisy D'ora, Michael von Newlinsky, and Sig Arno. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |