Diary of a Lost Girl

While critical plaudits are more often reserved for Pandora's Box, the first collaboration between director GW Pabst and star Louise Brooks, the pair's lurid and frequently baffling follow-up from the same year remains one of Weimar cinema's most notorious offerings.

The story of a wealthy pharmacist's daughter consigned to reform school after her rape yields an illegitimate child, Diary of a Lost Girl displays all the hallmarks of portentous melodrama as its protagonist strives toward hard-won social redemption. What rescues the movie from quaint anonymity is the nausea-inducing darkness that permeates its every frame.

Iconic, bob-haired Brooks is at once vulnerable and vital, adrift in a world of exploitative sexual predators. There's frequently comic value to be found in the grotesques our heroine encounters, but Pabst expertly lingers over their leering faces and guides the audience into a harrowing nightmare world. [Lewis Porteous]