Film Archive

Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen)

The young Thymian, herself still a child, is seduced by her father's assistant. After the birth of her illegitimate baby, her family puts her into a home. There she suffers with her fellow inmates under the control of a sadistical couple. Helped by the young poor Earl Osdorff she runs away and ends up in an urban brothel. She begins to like it there and becomes the focus of interest in a different and exciting world.

To help a customer of the brothel financially, Thymian is auctioned off at a nightclub. Her father witnesses this personally and dies shortly thereafter. Meinert, her seducer, buys her father's pharmacy to pay her off. Now the Earl becomes interested in Thymian due to her heir to the estate. He marries her but on hearing the news that Thymian donated all the money to her stepmother's children, he commits suicide.
Now that she has become the Countess she meets the rich uncle of her deceased husband who takes care of her. Together with him and other ladies of the high society Thymian visits the same home, where she reveals that she herself was a former inmate and furthermore the hypocrisy of the couple in charge.

Restored Version by the German Institute for Film Studies, Wiesbaden, and Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, Wiesbaden in cooperation with: Archivo National de la Imagen - Sodre, Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, Cinémathèque Française, Paris, Cinémathèque Royale Belge, Det Danske Filmmuseum, Kopenhagen.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst was born in 1885 in Raudnitz (former Czechoslovakia) and died in 1967 in Vienna. He worked as a theater set designer and theater actor before he began his film career. In 1921, he appeared in Carl Froelich's Im Banne der Kralle, after which he served as assistant director on Froelich's next two films. Pabst's debut film was The Treasure (Der Schatz, 1923). His critical analysis of bourgeois society and moral of the time is evidenced in The Street of Sorrow (Die freudlose Gasse, 1925) as well as in his films Pandora's Box (Die Buechse der Pandora, 1928) and Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, 1929). In 1930, he became president of the "Dacho" organization of German filmmakers, and together with H. Mann, E. Piscator and others, he founded the Association of Film Arts. A selection of his most well-known films includes: The Western Front 1918 (Westfront 1918, 1930), Comradeship (Kameradschaft, 1931), The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper, 1931), Queen of Atlantis (Die Herrin von Atlantis, 1932), Don Quichotte (1933), The Comedians (Komoedianten, 1941), Paracelsus (1943), The Trial (Der Prozess, 1948), The Last Act (Der letzte Akt, 1955), It Happened on July 20th (Es geschah am 20. Juli, 1955), and many more.
 

Genre Drama, Literature
Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 1929
Director Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Screenplay Rudolf Leonhardt
Director of Photography Sepp Allgeier
Music by Otto Stenzel
Producer Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Production Company Pabst-Film/Berlin
Principal Cast Siegfried Arno, Louise Brooks, Hans Casparius, Andrews Engelmann, Jaro Fuerth, Kurt Gerron, Valeska Gert, Franziska Kinz, Arnold Korff, Edith Meinhard, Vera Pawlowa, Fritz Rasp, André Roanne, Josef Rovensky, Sybille Schmitz
Length 100 min, 3,030 m
Format 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.33
Original Version silent
Intertitled Versions German
German Distributor Transit Film/Munich

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