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KINO ON VIDEO TO RELEASE PRIX DE BEAUTE ON DVD
Kino on Video is proud to release for the first time on DVD Augusta Genina's PRIX DE BEAUTE, a rare sound film starring the legendary Louise Brooks, coinciding with the centenary of the star's birth. The last major film made before the free-spirited icon's exile into B-movies and retirement, this naturalistic Continental tragedy is a must for fans of Brooks (as well as of directors René Clair and G.W. Pabst, both of whom had hands in the script). With a prebook date of January 10, 2006 and an SRP of $24.95, PRIX DE BEAUTE will street on February 7, 2006.
Although she hailed from the heartland town of Cherryvale, Kansas, the core of Louise Brooks' legacy ultimately begins and ends in Europe. After doing the obligatory showgirl stint of an early Hollywood starlet (in both the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals), the young Brooks transitioned onto American films, most notably as support in the carousing Howard Hawks buddy comedy A Girl in Every Port (1928). After continued clashing with a Hollywood not yet ready for her unconventional, modern energy, Brooks traveled to Germany at the behest of director G.W. Pabst. The fruits of this collaboration - Pandora's Box (1928) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) - stand as testaments to the full power of the silent screen, in large part due to Brooks' unprecedented performance style. Eschewing the histrionics that often characterized the first screen divas, with these two films Brooks contributed a subtly variegated, markedly adult, and definitively cinematic presence to our pantheon of sexual personae.
In part conceived by Pabst, the French production PRIX DE BEAUTE is a worthy coda to the duo's German masterworks. Its simple story follows Lucienne (Brooks), a happy-go-lucky secretary whose life is transformed when she wins a newspaper's "Miss Europe" beauty contest, as she finds herself courted by world royalty and estranged from her working class fiance. While the film's first half maintains a loose, naturalistic feel consanguine with the 1930s films of Renoir, Vigo, and co-scripter René Clair, PRIX DE BEAUTE's fatalistic finale is more of a piece with PANDORA'S BOX in both tenor and execution.
Although shot as a silent film and redubbed as a talkie (Brooks' singing was piped in by none other than Edith Piaf), PRIX DE BEAUTE qualifies as Brooks' only sound film of merit and last starring role. Sadly, her triumphs in Europe were followed by a return to Hollywood, where she was demoted to second string roles, B-movie westerns, and even the cutting room floor, before retiring from pictures permanently at age 32. With Kino's new transfer of PRIX DE BEAUTE, DVD audiences can now see one of the handful of films to utilize one of the most captivating, revolutionary personages in the history of cinema.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Stills gallery
In French with English subtitles.
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