Prix de Beaute (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it's too late; she's even then being named Miss France.

Directed by Augusto Genina. Starring Louise Brooks, Georges Charlia, and Augusto Bandini.

Prix de Beaute is a French film from 1930 about a beauty pageant to select the most beautiful girl in the world. One young woman enters, against the wishes of her boyfriend, and the ensuing fame it brings stretches their relationship to the breaking point. In a lot of these movies I've been watching from this year, I feel like the plot points are telegraphed well ahead of time, but I genuinely wasn't sure where this one was going to lead, which made its final scenes all the more powerful for me. It's an interesting movie to watch in a time of social media, where somehow the issue of men feeling like their women are being too publicly attractive is still a concern. It feels like a very modern story, just set in an older time frame. The movie moves pretty quickly and is an effective blend of silent and talking film technique -- there's plenty of spoken dialogue but the film also uses title cards to support transitions. I'm happy to be accessing a variety of non-English-language films as part of this project, and this is one of the more interesting ones.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Prix de Beaute > Deconstructing Harry

Prix de Beaute > Anna Karenina

Prix de Beaute < The Maltese Falcon

Prix de Beaute < Grave of the Fireflies

Prix de Beaute < We're Not Married!

Prix de Beaute < Mixed Nuts

Prix de Beaute > Primer

Prix de Beaute < The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Prix de Beaute < The Peanuts Movie

Prix de Beaute < Man on the Moon

Prix de Beaute < Mister Roberts

Prix de Beaute < Finian's Rainbow

Final spot: #871 out of 3601, or 76%.