As many other films – Hitchcock’s Blackmail is the most famous example – also Prix de beauté was produced exactly when the transition from the “silents” to the “Talkies” took place. Until now, we only knew the film in its sound version, with post-synchronised music, effects and dialogues, although by seeing the film it was evident that it had been originally conceived as a silent. Fortunately, a print found at the Cineteca Italiana in Milano made possible the reconstruction of the original silent version. This silent version was produced by using the same negative that produced the sound version; the only differences are in the three scenes that had been re-shot in order to have some synchronised dialogues; these scenes appear in this version as they were originally shot. However, the final scene is conserved only in its sound version. This silent version contributes to recreate the original pace of the film, restitutes the original composition of the images (before the frame was cropped to accomodate the soundtrack), and shows the outstanding photographic quality of the original negative.

“Shot as a silent film at the end of 1929 and totally post-synchronised with a dialogue in four languages (French, English, German and Italian), musical score and sounds, Prix de Beauté is a pioneer example of an absolutely exceptional dubbing for its time. In the years marking the passing from silent to sound cinema, while the norm was to post-synchronise the last silents with music and many sound effects, which called for a somewhat imprecise synchronism, it was instead rather strange that production company would make such an effort in dubbing the dialogue, for technical as well as ideological reasons. […]

Genina’s directing and Louise Brooks’s acting seem – although paradoxically – to be highlighted more in the silent version: devoid of its sound arrangement, Prix de Beauté shows itself for what it truly is, a late product of silent tradition.

Then we are amazed in discovering the partly documentarist or social approach by which the camera observes the public and participants in the beauty contest, or the attention paid to objects and reactions of the protagonist (the childish wonder by which Lucienne takes stock of her comfortable train compartment, the likewise childlike pride by which she shows her fiancé her new wardrobe and luxurious apartment, the dreariness of a petty bourgeois ménage depicted by modest furnishings and humble domestic objects scattered around the poor dwelling of the couple), and again – mostly – the merciless look by which at times Genina’s camera shows the imperfections and sagging in the body of a 24-year-old star, already heading towards a rapid and premature ending of her career, as well as dangerously adrift in her life, were we to believe the director’s own recollection: ‘She just drank away champagne and cognac. Her drunkenness started at four in the morning and ended in the early evening, but then she would start drinking again till four, at which time she was brought another champagne bottle. She was always sleeping. In the morning, when she was fetched and brought to the studio, she had to be carried as she continues to sleep. At the studio she was placed in an armchair for her make up, and still she was asleep. She woke up only for the takes; then she went on drinking and sleeping: she loved the barman!’

(Alberto Boschi, Prix de beauté, Cinegrafie, n. 12, 1998)