Louise Brooks - Looking for Lulu

Louise Brooks - Looking for Lulu
by Hugh Munro Neely

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DVD details

Actor: Dana Delany, Louise Brooks, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Roddy McDowall, Shirley MacLaine
Director: Hugh Munro Neely
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 60 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-06-29
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment

DVD Reviews of Louise Brooks - Looking for Lulu

DVD Review: Enjoyable, informative Brooksie bio
Summary: 4 Stars

"Looking for Lulu" is an entertaining and informative documentary on the life and careers of Jazz Age actress (and later author and film critic) Mary Louise Brooks. This well-researched, if too brief (one hour), biography includes film clips and interviews with Miss Brooks and her friends and colleagues. Shirley MacLaine's narration is wonderful and sympathetic.

DVD Review: If you want to buy this, wait!!!
Summary: 4 Stars

four and a half stars, actually.

Don't buy this DVD seperate--this documentary comes as an extra in the recent Criterion issue of "Pandora's Box"--an incredible issue of an incredible film.

I loved this documentary when I first saw it but then I read Barry Paris' biography--who also wrote this documentary. That book is an incredible and deeply moving experience; I don't recall being so moved by a biography before. That book shows how this film is way too brief--and just begins to get to the heart--and mind--of its subject. Still, for what it is--an introduction--its pretty damned good!

Buy "Pandora's Box" which includes this documentary, plus the complete "Lulu in Berlin": Richard Leacock's filmed interview with Louise from the mid-seventies; with Barry Paris's biography, you'll have everything!!

DVD Review: Louise Brooks -- a retrospective look
Summary: 4 Stars

Basic information on the life of a fascinating personality. But what should have been intriguing was cookie cutter sterile: birth-life-death-rediscovered. However, the interviews with an old Louise Brooks were riveting but way too short and the anecdotes from her niece were an interesting look at her personality from the perspective of her family.

DVD Review: Next Time, Give More
Summary: 4 Stars

Louise Brooks is often looked over because of her nonchalance about acting and her career. She was a very intelligent woman who was known for her intense sexuality. She made several films, the most important ones being made in Germany like Pandora's Box. Her career was ended when the talkies came, not because her voice did not record well but because she was so arrogant to the studios. Years after she stopped making films, she wrote a series of essays compiled into a book called Lulu in Hollywood which helped to rejuvenate her career.

This documentary is great for novice Brooks fans because it touches on basic information like her early life, transitioning into films, and the end of her career. It does not, however, provide much insight into who Brooks was as a person or truly why she behaved the way she did. It is certainly not a deep exploration into her character or her career. For this, it is slightly disappointing, but recognition is recognition after all, and silent film stars are often lucky to get that.

DVD Review: Exceptional documentary
Summary: 5 Stars

"Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu" is an exceptionally well-crafted and emotionally moving documentary. It is one of the best film documentaries I have seen. Barry Paris (author of the definitive biography of the actress) has written a masterful, sympathetic script. And director Hugh Munro Neely has fashioned a well-researched, balanced and finely documented study of this 20th century icon.

Louise Brooks (1906 - 1985) was incredibly photogenic - some have claimed her to be one of the most beautiful actresses of all time. The many photographic images shown in this film highlight Brooks' life and career as a girl growing up in small-town Kansas, as a Denishawn dancer (she danced alongside Martha Graham!), as a showgirl with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1920's New York, as a bobbed-hair flapper in a handful of American silent films, as Lulu - an innocent femme fatale murdered by Jack the Ripper in her most famous film - the now classic German production "Pandora's Box," and later in life, as an essayist and author of the bestselling book, "Lulu in Hollywood."

"Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu" features numerous film clips - some of them rare, including Brooks' first appearance in a movie, her first part in a talkie, and her last film, a low budget Western with John Wayne. There are also excerpts from an on-screen interview with the actress conducted later in her life. The film is narrated by Shirley MacLaine (herself a big Brooks fan), and features interviews with actor Francis Lederer, (Brooks' co-star in "Pandora's Box"), actor Roddy McDowell (a longtime admirer and friend), actress Dana Delany (another fan of the actress), and others who knew Brooks throughout her life. These interviews are well chosen, and help tell the story of her "life, death, and resurrection."

Perhaps the only criticism one could offer is that "Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu" is not long enough! (Pretty much everyone who has seen this film wishes for more.) Another twenty or thirty minutes spent exploring Brooks' time in Europe, her decades of obscurity, her rediscovery, and the cult which has grown up around her would be welcome. Otherwise, this film is highly recommended for anyone interested in Louise Brooks in particular or film history in general.

Description of Louise Brooks - Looking for Lulu

Film's first and perhaps ultimate modern woman. "Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu" explores the life of one of the silver screen's most enduring and provocative stars, the actress who created the sensual, yet innocent Lulu in G.W. Pabst's classic "Pandora's Box." Narrated by Shirley MacLaine, this critically acclaimed documentary combines rare film footage and photographs with interviews. Particularly fascinating is a previously unseen interview with Louise Brooks, filmed in 1976.

Produced in 1998 for Turner Classic Movies, this documentary is nearly as exceptional as its subject and just as fascinating. Born in Kansas, Louise Brooks rose from the Ziegfeld Follies to become a silent film icon. As biographer Barry Paris writes for this definitive hourlong profile (narrated by Shirley MacLaine), "Lulu" Brooks was "one of the most intensely erotic screen beauties of all time," and her rise, fall, and resurrection make for a fascinating personal history. Paris charts Brooks's controversial and often self-destructive course from Hollywood to Berlin (where she made cinema history in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl), while insightful interviews and abundant film clips provide breathtaking proof of Lulu's undeniable beauty. Most revealing are clips from a 1976 interview with Brooks, who remained utterly unique, sharply intelligent, and tragically convinced that she'd failed at everything. Looking for Lulu serves as captivating proof that she was wrong. --Jeff Shannon

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