A Girl in Every Port (1928)
and
The Canary Murder Case (1929)
Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Sunday, 7:00pm
More information
Come for the haircut. Silent film's iconic flapper, actress, writer, and theorist Louise Brooks is the subject of a double feature tomorrow night at the Harvard Film Archive.
Brooks is best known for playing a pair of prostitutes in the daring New Objectivity movies of German director G.W. Pabst. The films screening at the HFA are not quite as scandalous as Pandora's Box (1929), with its lesbian subplot and violent ending. But they offer a satisfying glimpse into the career that might have been had Brooks played ball with Hollywood.
A Girl in Every Port (1928) was the breakout flick for both Brooks and its director, Howard Hawks. It's a silent buddy picture about the sexual competition between two sailors (Vince McLaglen and Robert Armstrong). Brooks plays the woman they both loved in a performance widely considered a screen test for the role of Lulu in Pandora's Box.
The Canary Murder Case (1929), a lesser movie, is a hardboiled detective story. Brooks plays a scheming night club singer, and William Powell (best known for his later portrayal of Dashiell Hammett's Nick Charles) plays the detective who must solve her murder. Paramount dubbed the film for sound after shooting, but Brooks refused to return from Germany to record. Her voice was rendered, in thick Brooklynese, by Margaret Livingston.
Still from A Girl in Every Port from HFA promotional announcement
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