Pandora’s Box (1929)

Pandora’s Box is a German romantic film drama first released in 1929, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst.  The film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz and Krafft-Raschig.  It has also been released under the title: Die Büchse der Pandora.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


No one can resist the appeal of Lulu.  The beautiful young dancer is cursed with a raw sensual allure that no man can resist.  Dr Schön gives up his fiancée and reputation to marry her - and quickly regrets it.  When he sees his son in Lulu’s arms, Schön hands her a gun and commands her to kill herself.  In the ensuring struggle, it is Schön who dies.  Lulu is condemned for his manslaughter, but manages to escape, with the help of Schön’s son and her erstwhile protector, Schigolch.  A swift decline towards poverty follows, and Lulu is driven into prostitution to save herself and her friends from starvation.  The final act of her tragic life awaits her in the mist shrouded streets of London – a meeting with Jack the Ripper...

Pandora’s Box is one of the great masterpieces of early German cinema, directed by one of the country’s most accomplished cineastes, G.W. Pabst, and starring Louise Brooks, one of the greatest and most instantly recognisable of film icons.  The film is virtually unique for its time in that it combines the familiar expressionist technique of 1920s German cinema - chiaroscuro lighting, stylised camerawork and darkly oppressive sets - with tacitly realistic performances.  It is this mix of dreamlike expressionism and brutal realism which makes the film so effective and intense, with a modernity which is rarely seen in films of this era.

Part morality tale, part social critique, the film is also a scathing reflection of a Germany sliding into decadence and complacency in the dying days of the Weimar Republic.  It was based on the plays "Die Büchse der Pandora" and "Erdgeist"  by the eminent German playwright Frank Wedekind.  The film was poorly received when it was first released, and proved to be highly controversial.  For its overseas releases, several cuts were imposed by the censor, and it has only recently been fully restored.  Most shocking were an overt depiction of lesbianism (the earliest in cinema) and the film’s brutally nihilistic ending, which were cut from many versions.

German audiences were scandalised by Louise Brooks’s portrayal of Lulu.  In contrast to the mannered, expressionist approach to acting that was in vogue at the time, Brooks’s performance is striking in its restraint and realism.  Brooks can almost be regarded as the first modern film actor, employing very subtle facial expressions to convey her character’s emotions, instead of exaggerated body gestures.  At the time, some critics described her performance as lazy and expressionless; today, it is judged to be extraordinarily effective, one of the best to be found in any silent film.

Pabst was the only film director Louise Brooks worked for who appreciated her talent and knew how to use it to maximum effect.  The American actress combines the irresistible overt sexuality of the devastating femme fatale with a childlike fairytale innocence which makes her even more alluring and dangerous to the men who fall under her spell.  Her roles in the two films she made for Pabst – Pandora’s Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl – play to her strengths and capture the essence of Brooks’s own indomitable and tragic persona.  Like the characters she plays, Brooks was a doomed heroine, unable to take command of the forces that drove her, forces which would ultimately ruin her life and come very close to destroying her.

Not only was Louise Brooks a natural-born actress of immense talent, but she had the most remarkable screen presence.  Henri Langlois of the Cinematèque française famously rated her over Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.  Yet Brooks’s career was short lived, and her period of stardom even shorter.  Her temperament and scandalous private life made her unpopular with studio bosses in Hollywood and, after a series of humiliations, she gave up acting for good in 1938, beginning a period of slow decline that led to depression, destitution and oblivion.  Following her rediscovery in the late 1950s, her fortunes improved and she made a name for herself as a writer, although she was always dismissive of her own abilities, stating that she failed at everything she tried.  Today Louise Brooks has that mythic quality that only the greatest of screen actors acquire.  The fact that her talent is revealed in so few films (around half a dozen, if that) can only add to her mystique.

© James Travers 2008

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