Review: ‘Focus on Louise Brooks’ on Limited Edition Flicker Fusion Blu-ray

Flicker Alley’s Focus on Louise Brooks gathers four silent films made at Paramount from 1925 to 1927 that attest to the magnetism of a major screen presence. The set includes the mostly intact The Street of Forgotten Men, along with the remnants of The American Venus, Just Another Blonde, and Now We’re in the Air. The importance of this collection lies as much in its historical record as in the individual films.

The Street of Forgotten Men, from 1925, is a strange drama about a young woman (Mary Brian) who was raised by a street beggar, Easy Money Charley (Percy Marmont), who pretends to be missing an arm and proudly calls himself “the most notorious faker in New York.” He survives by exploiting public sympathy. The film is a melodrama stacked with themes of fraudulence and performance. The second reel is missing, but the gap has been reconstructed with still photographs and explanatory intertitles, keeping the narrative clear. Brooks appears briefly and without credit in her first screen role but makes a memorable impression.

Very little of 1926’s The American Venus, a comedy centered on a beauty pageant, survives. What remains consists of trailers and a short color screen test of Brooks. The trailer promises glamor, declaring that “The modern Venus wears the latest, loveliest creations from Paris.” In the existing footage, Esther Ralston, Fay Lanphier, and Brooks all appear luminous. The color test is especially striking, as almost no other color footage of Brooks exists.

Also from 1926, Just Another Blonde was partly shot on Coney Island and exists only in incomplete form, with more than half of the film lost. The existing material suggests a modest studio comedy rather than a prestige production. Brooks plays Diane O’Sullivan, a brunette opposite Dorothy Mackaill’s titular blonde. While the film itself appears slight, it shows Brooks working confidently within the conventions of mid-1920s commercial comedy.

Only about 22 minutes of 1927’s Now We’re in the Air, an aviation comedy, survive. Box office receipts suggest the film was a commercial success upon release. From the remaining scenes, it’s easy to see why: There’s some lively action, and Brooks, playing twin sisters with opposite allegiances during WWI, is memorable. The film, like the others collected in Focus on Louise Brooks, doesn’t hold a candle to her later collaborations with G.W. Pabst in Germany, but this set clearly documents the early development of a distinctive and confident screen presence.

Image/Sound

For films that are roughly a century old, the surviving elements look excellent after being scanned in 4K. The Street of Forgotten Men has been restored from 35mm nitrate film, as have Just Another Blonde and Now We’re in the Air. A musical score by Stephen Horne accompanies The Street of Forgotten Men, and it is presented with clean, clear audio on this disc.

Extras

Film historian Pamela Hutchinson provides a feature-length commentary for The Street of Forgotten Men, as well as appears in a featurette that examines how each film helped to shape Louise Brooks’s screen presence. We also three shorter commentary tracks featuring film historian Thomas Gladysz, who’s joined by film historian Kathy Rose O’Regan on Just Another Blonde and by film preservationist Robert Byrne on The American Venus and Now We’re in the Air. The supplements are rounded out with a restoration demonstration, an image gallery, and a booklet containing an essay by Gladysz along with restoration notes by Byrne.

Overall

The thoughtfully curated Focus on Louise Brooks preserves rare fragments of a major star’s earliest screen work, while placing them in clear and valuable historical context.