Has there ever been a greater life force on screen than Louise Brooks as the large-hearted vamp Lulu? Now I see what Howard Hawks meant with his famous remark: “The camera loves some people.” The camera loves her eyes, her black bob hairdo, her every gesture. Men are helpless before her charm, but the sheer power of her cheerfully non-discriminating need to capture every man who strolls across her path destroys them one by one. The source material - Frank Wedekind's plays - infuses the film with a withering irony that seems quite comntemporary. This is the first silent film I’ve seen with credible psychological realism, though of course Lulu, as incarnated in Louise, is larger than life. A star is born. Too bad Louise Brooks did not have as big a career as Marilyn Monroe.
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