z, it's coming together, i've had a thought

"Louise Brooks embodied America in the 1920s, and she was also the emblem of decadent Weimar Germany. To quote Stephen Sondheim, in the Depression she was depressed. She is Edna St. Vincent Millay's candle that burned at both ends; the lovely light of the twenties extinguished, Brooks felt that she was a fuck-up, and her self-loathing turned her into a fascinating recluse who spent the rest of her life in bed with books and booze. We'd all like to link failure to integrity, and she managed that quite well. Brooks never lost that first disillusionment in adolescence that seems bottomless because there is nothing to compare it to. Frozen in mortification, her face a lasting monument to outraged purity, she learned not to expect anything from life. Pabst, her erstwhile Von Sternberg and mentor, finally gave up on her childish fury and aimlessness. 'Your life is exactly like Lulu's, he concluded, 'and you will end the same way.'''

Bright Lights Film Journal (Dan Callahan)