Why did you always hate making pictures, Louise? – William A. Wellman, 1932
Beggars Of Life (1928) is another unsung classic getting a second life courtesy of Kino-Lorber. Beggars Of Life, along with Howard Hawks’ A Girl In Every Port (1928), marks the high point of Louise Brooks’ achievements as an actor in Hollywood. In Beggars Of Life, Brooks is remarkable as the girl who runs off to live as a hobo with Richard Arlen after killing her adopted father when he sexually assaults her. Brooks’ androgynous look in the film, mining a similar cultural terrain as Dietrich, has become one of Hollywood’s great queer images, even being re-appropriated and adapted by Guido Crepax in his Valentina comics. The director of Beggars Of Life, William A. Wellman, later offered Brooks the Jean Harlow role in his Public Enemy (1931), though nothing came of it.
Wellman’s direction throughout his career, from Wings (1927) to The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and beyond, was indelibly marked by his experiences as a pilot in WWI. Wellman’s films are staged and cut for action, for economy of story, and always steer more towards the male characters than the female. So while Wallace Beery temporarily overwhelms Beggars Of Life, the fact that Wellman consistently privileges Brooks and Arlen equally is something of an exception in his oeuvre.
Louise Brooks’ very modern take on performance, accompanied by Wellman’s “pulpy” style, makes Beggars Of Life feel almost contemporary in its cinematographic sensibilities. There are hundreds upon hundreds of silent films but only a few that have survived the sands of time that can bring to audiences a pleasure that isn’t distinctly tied to their position as quasi historical artifacts. Beggars Of Life is as exceptional as its star and should be seen.
