I know little to nothing about Louise Brooks, the silent-era actress best known for the German films Pandora’s Box (1928) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). I thought she was German; turns out she was born in Kansas and lived there most of her life! Who knew? She made a total of twenty-four films, and I may have seen one of them (The Canary Murder Case, 1929, one of the Philo Vance mysteries with William Powell and Jean Arthur). Yet here is a movie, The Chaperone, about the early years of Louise Brooks, that is destined, I fear, to remain in relative obscurity.

Michael Engler’s film employs Brooks’ first visit to New York City as its premise (her parents demand a chaperone accompany the teenager to her dancing school audition), but the story is much more concerned with that chaperone’s personal journey to find her birth mother. Young Louise (Haley Lu Richardson) is more than a handful, of course, yet Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) is distracted by her own unfulfilled passions. Yet it is Norma who returns to Kansas with a new lease on life, while Louise moves on to international stardom — for a time. A coda to the story puts things in perspective, reminding us that life moves on, no matter what.

This was not at all what I might have expected. Louise Brooks is almost ancillary to the story, and nothing of her film career is present, for in this story she has yet to become an actress. And yet one can see that she is bound to stand out from her contemporaries. Her attitudes about sex and feminism are perhaps too forthright — they seem to be contemporary to our time and not that of a century ago. Yet they are, and she is, certainly compelling. Norma’s story is also surprising, and also seems more attuned to our time than the 1920s. So I must admit some disappointment with the total lack of Hollywood history that I would have liked to explore.

That said, what is provided onscreen is interesting and compelling. Meaningful contrast is provided between rural Kansas and urban New York City during a fascinating era, while Norma’s personal story covers a rather amazing arc. It is Norma’s story which provides the meat of this movie, and to my surprise I found it perhaps even more significant than a recreation of Louise’s madcap adventures might have been. This is something different, and worth searching out for yourself. ☆ ☆ ☆. 17 July 2019.