Diary of a Lost Girl

Diary of a Lost Girl is a 1929 German silent film directed by G. W. Pabst and starring American silent star Louise Brooks. The film is shot in black and white, and diverse versions of the film range from 79 minutes to 116 minutes in length. This was Brooks' second and last film with Pabst, and like their prior collaboration, Pandora's Box, many film historians consider it to be a classic. It is based on the controversial and bestselling 1905 novel of the same name by Margarete Böhme. The novel had been previously adapted by Richard Oswald as Diary of a Lost Woman. Plot Thymian Henning, the innocent, naive daughter of pharmacist Robert Henning, is puzzled when their housekeeper, Elisabeth, leaves suddenly on the day of Thymian confirmation. It turns out that her father has got Elisabeth pregnant. Elisabeth's body is brought to the pharmacy later that day, an apparent suicide by drowning, upsetting Thymian. Thymians' father's assistant Meinert, promises to explain it all to her late that night, but instead rapes her while she is unconscious, and she also becomes pregnant. Though Thymian refuses to name the illegitimate baby's father, the relatives find out from her diary, and decide that the best solution is for her to marry Meinert. When she refuses because she does not love him, they give the baby to a midwife and send her to a strict reformatory for wayward girls run by a tyrannical woman and her tall, bald assistant.