This is a must for Louise Brooks fans: her presence in this rare French film is electrifying, as always. Moreover, in the story of a Parisian typist who steals the show at a beauty contest and becomes the reigning queen, only to be cut down in the midst of the limelight, the film, which starts out hilariously, becomes a haunting mirror for the legendary actress herself. At age twenty-four, this was to be her last starring role, coming after her two great films with Pabst and before her lukewarm reception in the Hollywood of the talkies. Both Pabst and René Clair were involved in the conception of the film (a silent that was half-heartedly transformed mid-way into a talkie), but final directorship was given to the Italian Augusto Genina. Along with cinematographer Rudolph Maté, who had just completed Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (see October 12), he created an almost cinema-verité portrait of a Parisian working class milieu. In contrast to this, the film's highlight is a bravura finale directed by Clair himself, in which sound and image become ironically disjointed as art and life are consciously merged.