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With: Louise Brooks, Percy Marmont, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton, Esther Ralston, Ford Sterling, Lawrence Gray, Fay Lanphier, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Dorothy Mackaill, Jack Mulhall, William Collier Jr., Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Russell Simpson
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Written by: Paul Schofield, John Russell, Frederick Stowers, Robert Benchley, George Marion Jr., Monte Brice, Keene Thompson, Thomas J. Geraghty
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Directed by: Herbert Brenon, Frank Tuttle, Alfred Santell, Frank R. Strayer
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 137
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Date: 02/13/2026
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Focus on Louise Brooks (2026)
It's a Lulu
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Louise Brooks was one of the most notable stars of the silent era. She stood out from the crowd with her unique look, her raw screen charisma, and her charged eroticism. During her short and oftentimes disharmonious career, she made 24 films in total. Sixteen of them exist in complete form. Four are lost, and four exist only in fragments. The new Blu-ray collection from Flicker Alley, Focus on Louise Brooks, collects the four fragments.
In truth, this release (all four selections are on one disc), is more of a triumph of film restoration than it is an appreciation of Brooks, as there's not really much of her here. The first film is The Street of Forgotten Men (1925). With the use of stills and dialogue cards, this one has been restored as much as possible to its complete length, using a 35mm nitrate negative, and it now runs 74 minutes. It's officially Brooks's debut, although she's only an uncredited extra, so viewers that are watching the entire film just to get a glimpse of her will be disappointed, but those interested in seeing a newly restored relic from the 1920s will be fascinated.
Roughly eight minutes exists of The American Venus (1926), which features Brooks in a supporting role, and it consists of trailers, a couple of fragments, and just a couple seconds of a two-strip Technicolor test. It appears to be a kind of slapstick comedy set around a beauty contest. Thirty-two minutes of Just Another Blonde (1926), a romantic drama with two men and two women, filmed on Coney Island, exists. Brooks has the smallest part of the foursome. Finally, there's Now We're in the Air (1927), of which 23 minutes was found as recently as 2016 in Prague. It's a comedy set during the First World War. Brooks apparently plays twins, one French and one German, but the footage only features the German twin.
The disc includes a ton of great extras, including a thorough liner notes booklet packed with photos and an essay written by the preeminent Brooks expert Thomas Gladysz (check out the Louise Brooks Society, which he created more than 30 years ago and has maintained since). Other bonuses include commentary tracks for all the footage: Pamela Hutchinson on The Street of Forgotten Men, Gladysz and Kathy Rose O'Regan on Just Another Blonde, and Gladysz and Robert Byrne on both The American Venus and Now We're in the Air. There's a 35-minute featurette about Brooks, Looking at Lulu, which is an excellent place to start when exploring this disc. We also get a fascinating restoration demo (9 minutes), as well as a still gallery and optional subtitles in English, French, German, and Spanish. Recommended.
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