PANDORA'S BOX, 1929, Germany, 133 min.
Genre: Drama
Release Data: November 2006 (US Only)
Based on the plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora by Franz Wedekind
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Director(s): Georg Wilhelm Pabst
The film that catapulted silent screen star, Louise Brooks, to international fame and made her “the icon of the Jazz Age”. One of the last silent films ever made, its director encouraged Brooks, then a middling Hollywood star, to pack in her studio contract and go to Weimar-era Germany. The hedonistic heroine, Lulu, was the definitive 1920s vamp, who drew men and women alike to her magnetic flame. Her character has subsequently become the subject of an on-going stream of films, however, at the time of its release, this initial version was unappreciated in the US where the New York Times of the day found it “a disconnected melodramatic effusion in which there is an attempt to depict a thoughtless, attractive woman and her unsavory experiences.”
Lulu, a cabaret dancer, is the flirtatious mistress of wealthy socialite newspaper publisher, Dr. Peter Schoen, whom she hopes to convince to marry her. But Peter is distracted by his need to break off their affair and marry the far more respectable Charlotte von Zanik, in order to preserve his social standing. The devastated, Lulu tries her seductive best to change her lover’s mind by pulling a series of admirers, both male and female, into her orbit. Flashing a radiant smile here and a sensual glance there, Louise Brooks gives us a mesmerizing performance that is at once both erotically charged and childishly innocent. But, eventually, things do unravel and, as the result of an accident involving a pistol Lulu finds herself in court, convicted of killing her lover.
Notes: This is a silent film with a very few dialogue cards in German, which are subtitled in English.
Do not confuse with the Jeffrey Lau film of the same title, which is based on the Chinese classic The Journey to the West (DVD released January 1998, Canada Only)
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