ShangLuda Admirable film.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

onolaie This is a beautiful film, easy to follow the story even in the French language version without subtitles because of the great pantomime performance by Louise Brooks: her facial expressions and reactions to events tell the whole story from beginning to end. She submits her own photographs to the contest sponsored by the newspaper (or magazine) that she works for as a typist, but later tries to withdraw from, but then, surprise, she wins the title of Miss France and and is sent to Spain (wearing an ermine or chinchilla coat) for the bigger event of Miss Europe. Her fiancé for some reason is angry by the attention and misunderstands. When she unwraps the pears for the dinner table she is stunned to see a picture of herself in the crumpled newspaper. A motif that her growing fame is stalking her. There are several scenes with clocks behind Miss Brooks foreshadowing the climax. Very poignant is the scene when he takes her to a photographer for a family picture of them together, she is very sad (but tears are unnecessary and might have made the scene over sentimental). Her ironic scene with the canary is a cinematic allusion to her previous 1928 silent film The Canary Murder Case (in which her character was also murdered, another irony), for which she refused to return to Hollywood to dub her voice ... odd to note that a French speaking actress dubbed her few lines (Miss Brooks says one or two words, but several words in French are rapidly spoken). The most ironic scene of all is the private screening of herself on film. Incidentally, I recognized the unmistakable voice of Josephine Baker as the singing voice for Miss Brooks during three segments. When she sees herself on the screen for the first time her joy and fascination with the cinema version of herself is amazing; she is enraptured as if the beauty belongs to somebody else, and not her real self. When her hand is held by the man sitting next to her in the projection room during this scene, she is aware but her smile is not for him, it is for her screen image that she continues to stare at. This is the climax when her fiancé sneaks pass the guard to find her in the projection room, sees the ecstasy on her face and sees the man next to her holding her hand, which he misunderstands.

kirksworks This is full of major spoilers, so beware."Prix de Beaute" always suffers in comparison to the two films Louise Brooks made with G. W. Pabst, "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl," but in some ways, "Prix" is the quintessential Brooks film. Here she has a chance to be charming without the dark side of her Pabst collaboration. What "Prix" has that the Pabst films don't is music. In this early French film, the whole Louise Brooks mystique is fleshed out powerfully with a conjunction of image, song and music. The Charleston is what seems most associated with Brooks (she was the first to dance it in Europe), but the essence of the actress comes across more strongly in the tango. The tango also plays a plot point in "Prix," being the music she danced with on her short rise to stardom after becoming Miss Europe. Later, when she has forsaken her fame in favor of a mundane existence as the wife of jealous husband Andre, the longing for her forsaken fame becomes apparent when the same tango record is seen on her apartment record player. So appropriate is the tango to Brooks it is used to accompany the documentary about her life, "Looking for Lulu," a film narrated by Shirley Maclaine. The brazen and forceful quality of the tango epitomizes Louise Brooks' strong-headed but elegant and erotic individuality. The song, "Je n'ai qu'un amour, c'est toi," adds an immense amount of pathos to what is not a great film (but a very good one). By the way, Brooks' voice was not dubbed for the film by Edith Piaf as some have claimed. Piaf was born in 1915, and wasn't discovered until 1935. The song, however, is what Brooks' character, Lucienne, sings to Andre at the beginning of the film to cheer him up and express her deep affection for him. And at the climax it is the song she sings for her screen test, which she views with the producers and managers who intend to shape her career. It continues on screen after husband Andre, who has followed her to the screening room, shoots and kills her. In a single shot, with Lucienne's dead body in repose at the bottom of the screen while her screen test continues above with the song she once sang to Andre, the essence of what movies do that other art forms do not is perfectly characterized. As Andre watches his now dead wife sing to him on screen, the murder weapon still smoking, he subtly smiles. She is now his forever, and by association, ours. Coincidentally, Louise Brooks real life career crashed and burned after "Prix de Beaute," so it was also the death of her final starring roll as well. This film really seals the Brooks mystique more so than the Pabst films (which are superior films, no doubt). It also points out what it is about the movies that create the whole idea of the "cult" of the movies - where people like Brooks, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe live on more intensely after their death than when they were alive.

MartinHafer Please Note: I see from the various posts that there was an original silent version and also a sound version of this same film. I saw the sound version and it was esthetically yicky. Considering some indicate that the original version was LONGER and without crappy dubbing, my review must be read with this in mind.Although I know that Rene Clair has a lovely reputation as a film maker and Louise Brooks has a bit of a cult following as well, this is in many ways a technically poorly made film. While Hollywood had already pretty much switched to sound mode around 1929, up through the early to almost the mid-30s, a lot of famous French films were essentially silent films--with some dialog and sound effects very poorly slapped over top the film. The lip movements in many, and in particular this film, don't even come close to matching what is being said and this would explain why an American like Ms. Brooks could do a French film. This is just sloppy and I would have preferred they had just made a silent film--and as a silent film this is would have been an average film--with excellent camera work (at times) and some decent silent-style acting.The problem I also found with the film was the overly simplistic plot. For a silent morality play circa 1920, it would have been fine, but by 1930 standards the plot is a bit hoary (that means "old"--not "slutty"). A lady wins a beauty contest and her macho fiancé can't handle it. She gives it all up, temporarily, but is lured back to the fancy life and this spells her end! A tad melodramatic, huh? And also a bit simplistic and underdeveloped.Finally, the character of the fiancé's friend(?) I found very disturbing and unreal. He looked like Harold Lloyd and spent much of the movie being abused and picked on by the friend and everyone else. As he just took it throughout the movie and no resolution came about, his character seemed superfluous and the treatment he received mean-spirited. Were audiences supposed to laugh as he was abused? This seems to me that's what is implied and I don't like it at all.There are FAR better French films of the era (Le Million, La Femme du Boulanger, Fanny, Regain, and others) as well as better silent films. I just can't understand this film's high rating.

tprofumo Cult icon Louise Brooks was never better than she is in this early French talkie, which turned out to be her last staring role.While Brooks' two German films, "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl" are far better known in the US, "Prix" is clearly just as good a film, in my view much better than the butchered "Diary.""Prix" tells a simple story of a working class French girl who dreams of a better life and sets out to get it by entering a beauty pageant. Rising all the way to the position of "Miss Europe," she then gives it all up for the working class man she loves. But she finds that life as a housewife in a dreary walk up flat is killing her soul, as is her jealous husband, and eventually she walks out when she gets a chance at a film contract. But her husband won't let her go and the film builds to a tragic ending that is still considered one of the best climatic scenes in film history.This film features strong direction, extremely exciting location photography by famed cinematographer (and later director) Rudolph Mate and an intelligent,Spartan script by Rene Clair.But the wonder of the film is Brooks herself. Although her voice is dubbed by a French actress (Brooks didn't speak French) the film was initially planned as a silent and in large chunks of it, her character doesn't speak, anyway. But Brooks' fortune was her face and what she could do with it and there are few in film history who could do more. While there are some echos of silent film technique in her work, she was so far ahead of her time that most of her performance seems as fresh today as it did in 1929. Whether she is the unhappy girl being dragged by her boyfriend through a working class mob at a carnaval, or the depressed housewife staring into a canary's cage and feeling just as trapped, Brooks is a revelation.But it is when she is happy in this film that Brooks simply leaps off the screen at you. In most of the still photos she shot over the years, Brooks doesn't smile, apparently because she'd promised herself not to ever wear one of those pasted on grins found on showgirls on stage. But when called upon in a film to express happiness, no one ever exceeded Brooks, who may be the most magnetic actress in film history.While "Pandora's Box" will always be her signature film, "Prix de Beaute" ranks a close second in my mind as the best film work of her career.