Thymian is the daughter of pharmacist Karl Robert Henning. She is shocked when the maid suddenly leaves the house and is found dead afterwards. Thymian feels lonely and falls unconscious, which is used by Meinert, Henning's assistant, to sleep with her. When Thymian gets the baby, the family wants her to marry Meinert, but she does not love him and refuses. The family thus bring her baby to an orphanage and Thymian herself to a boarding school, ruled by a strict director. Thanks to Count Osdorff, who loves her, Thymian escapes from the school with her friend Erika, but finds out her baby died in the meantime. Thymian becomes a prostitute. When her father dies, she inherits his money, but gives it away to father's new wife, Mata, and her two kids. Upon hearing Thymian gave away all the money, Osdorff commits suicide by jumping through the window. Thymian becomes the new director of the boarding school, and wants to show love and compassion towards the rebellious girls there.
The second and final collaboration between German director G. W. Pabst and American actress Louise Brooks, after their first film "Pandora's Box" became a sensation, "Diary of a Lost Girl" is an ambitious drama, but both films are overhyped and tend to be too much of a straight-forward melodrama at times. At his best, Pabst is able to conjure up an emotional essay about the tragedy of life and the misunderstanding of outsiders who are rejected by the society that does not even want to try to understand and help them in a constructive way; but at his worst, he makes a story that resembles a soap opera. Brooks is consistently great in both films and shows off her charisma. "Diary" seems like five films pressed into one, since the storyline jumps from subplot to subplot (father's affair; Thymian's unwanted pregnancy; Thymian in a reformatory; Thymian in a brothel...) yet only the reformatory school undergoes a full circle in the delicious ending where Thymian herself becomes the director of the institution, but decides to show compassion instead of punishment towards the students. This would have made a better film, a film that follows only this story, instead of losing focus on other episodes. Some details are also well directed, such as the sequence where the bald, tall assistant of the reformatory has his back turned towards Thymian and Count Osdorff, but sees them hugging in the reflection, and thus turns around to seperate them, indicating his jealousy and secret affection for her.
Grade:++
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