Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.
The Greek gods created a woman: Pandora. She was beautiful – enticing – well versed in the infatuating arts of flattery. But the gods also gave her a casket in which they locked up all the evil in the world. The heedless woman opened the box and disaster overcame us! . . . . Statement of the trial prosecutor in Pandora's Box
I bought this film recently and it arrived nicely sealed in cellophane. Naturally, I was reluctant to open it – what with the film's title being what it is! Nevertheless, I bit the bullet, heedless man than I am. This film by G.W. Pabst is, after all, a legendary silent film masterpiece and one of the last great pre-talkies, so I was understandably anxious to drop it into the VCR.
Historical Background: Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1895-1967), known universally as "G.W.", turned from a career in theater to films in 1921, when he returned to Vienna after World War I. He worked as an actor, assistant director, and screenwriter for a couple of years before taking up directing in 1923. His film style combined German expressionism (which emphasized stylized acting, artificial sets, expressionistic lighting effects, and an atmosphere of surrealism) with the emerging pessimistic realism (with its emphasis on psychological underpinnings), engendered by the spiraling hyperinflation then rampant in Weimar Germany. Pabst's third film, Street of Sorrow (1925), starred Werner Krauss, Asta Nielsen, and Greta Garbo, and included Marlene Dietrich as an extra. The deepening pessimism that Pabst and others were experiencing about the situation in Germany was again evident in Secrets of a Soul (1926), but with Pandora's Box (1928), Pabst turned to the psychological domain of Freudian sexuality. Pandora's Box would star Louise Brooks, who Pabst again utilized for his last silent film, The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). After that, Pabst moved on to the sound film medium, excelling with the likes of The Threepenny Opera (1931).
The Story: Lulu (Louise Brooks) is the enchanting mistress of Dr. Peter Schön (Fritz Kortner), a wealthy and influential newspaper publisher and pillar of the community. Lulu also maintains a friendship with an old and disreputable drunk named Schigolch (Carl Goetz), who sponges off her but also watches out for her interests. Schigolch arrives at Lulu's apartment (which is paid for by Dr. Schön) to inform her that one of his associates, Rodrigo Quast (Krafft Raschig), would like her to perform in his trapeze act. When Peter suddenly arrives at the door, Lulu hides Schigolch on the porch, with a bottle of whiskey.
Peter has come to tell Lulu that he intends to break off their relationship. It's damaging his social standing and he intends to marry the respectable Charlotte von Zanik (Daisy d'Ora) instead. Lulu does her utmost to try to dissuade him from this resolve, almost succeeding until Peter discovers the intoxicated Schigolch. Peter storms out but, later, Lulu shows up at his home under the pretense of a visit to his son, Alwa (Francis Lederer), who is also under her spell. Alwa, who is a playwright and a producer, is meeting with his costume designer, Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts). The Countess is a lesbian and more than a little smitten with Lulu herself. When Lulu coyly asks Anna to make one of the pretty outfits for her, Anna is only too willing to oblige. After Lulu departs, Peter suggests that Alwa feature Lulu in his new revue and promises to use his newspaper to ensure that the production is a success.
Opening night turns out to be climactic. Peter shows up with his fiancée, Charlotte, on his arm. Lulu is miffed to the point of refusing to appear on stage while Charlotte is present. Schön comes into Lulu's dressing room to coax her into behaving, but Lulu seduces him instead. Charlotte walks in as the pair is locked in a kiss and soon it is Lulu rather than Charlotte who is wearing the bridal gown.
At the wedding party, Quast and Schigolch sneak into the bridal chamber to deposit a floral wreath on the bed. Lulu discovers them there and just as Schigolch is bestowing a paternal kiss on her cheek, Schön walks in and is enraged with jealousy. He chases the pair out of the house with a revolver and then demands Lulu kill herself before they both end up dead. During a tussle over the revolver, Schön accidentally shoots himself.
SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP TO THEMES TO AVOID.
Lulu is put on trial and is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years. Her friends, however, stage a riot by setting off the fire alarm, and during the melee, manage to spirit her out of the courtroom. She goes into hiding with Alwa, Schigolch, and the rest of her "crew." Alwa, however, is a compulsive gambler and loses every penny they are able to acquire. Lulu very nearly gets sold into prostitution to a man who runs an establishment in Cairo. It takes another well-timed melee for Lulu, Alwa, and Schigolch to evade arrest and escape to London. The trio is soon living in utmost poverty in a bitterly cold room in a London slum. Despite Alwa's reservations, Lulu has to turn to streetwalking as their last means of earning enough money to feed themselves. Unfortunately, her first and last London trick turns out to be Jack (Gustav Diesel) – Jack the Ripper, that is.
END SPOILERS.
Themes: The core idea of the film is the notion of the dangerous femme fatale who is lethal to any man (or woman) lured into her sphere of influence. Lulu doesn't so much lead them to their ruination as provide a lure for their own self-destruction. Lulu is a femme fatale by accident rather than by design. The impulse for the annihilation of her paramours is their own lust. Lulu is just the flame of a candle that the others circle like moths until they finally fly into it. All the characters other than Lulu are defined entirely by their relationship to her. If Lulu herself is destructive, it's only to herself and she is ultimately brought down by her own moral shortcomings.
By in large, Lulu is a consummately modern woman – a proto-feminist. Her sexiness is of a somewhat boyish variety. She is at ease with her sexuality. Her confident demeanor reveals a woman living with a real sense of self rather than behaving like an appendage of one or another of the men who crave her.
Production Values: The script was based on a pair of tragedies written by German playwright Frank Wedeind (1864-1918), entitled Der Erdgeist and Die Büchse Der Pandora, respectively. The same material was later used as the basis for Alban Berg's opera Lulu (1934). The subject matter was very steamy for its time, what with the sympathetic treatment afforded a prostitute and the positive portrayal of a lesbian. Pabst glides as effortlessly through the minefields of lust, jealousy, compulsive gambling, and murder as does any modern film. It’s a high quality script, especially in its management of the chaotic ensemble scenes at the cabaret and onboard ship. Pabst manages to tell the story almost exclusively through images, with relatively few title placards for a 110-minute film.
The cinematography is highly expressionistic. Most of the frames have a misty or smoky appearance. Pabst was a master of lighting and chiaroscuro and the scenes are often lit with shimmering candlelight. As a result, the faces in close-up often have a mysterious quality. Pabst makes too little use of close-ups, however, relying excessively on midrange shots. Stuart Oderman provided a powerful and spirited piano score.
Louise Brooks's mesmerizing and celebrated performance as Lulu is the highlight of the film. Pabst chose the relatively unknown Brooks for the part over Marlene Dietrich. He had seen Brooks in a couple of Hollywood films, A Girl in Every Port, directed by Howard Hawks, and Beggars of Life, directed by William Wellman, both made in 1928. Brooks had been given very few quality roles in Hollywood because she did not fit the model of the glamour queens that Hollywood was trying to promote at that time. Europe, on the other hand, was ripe for the proto-feminist kind of sexual allure that Marlene Dietrich would soon perfect in The Blue Angel (1930). Brooks appears in Pandora's Box with a short black pageboy bob. Her eyes sparkle with intelligence. Her character is smart and confident, but devoid of guile. The combination of sexiness with a childlike innocence must have been a novelty in 1928 and still resonates today. Brooks's naturalistic style of acting contrasted nicely with the more stylized performances of the German performers. Brooks was once a Ziegfeld girl and it shows in the way that she glides effortlessly through her scenes.
The story of Brooks's personal life is very nearly as fascinating as the film's storyline. She followed her success in Pandora's Box with two more lead roles in Europe, one in Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and the other in the French film, Prix de Beauté (1930). When she then returned to Hollywood, she was stunned to discover that her stock value hadn't increased a bit back home. She was again offered only minor roles in minor films, so she retired from the movies in 1931 and worked as a nightclub dancer. She made an attempt at a comeback in 1936-8, but again was offered only minor roles in B-Westerns, though one of them, Overland Stage Raiders, had her playing alongside a then unknown young actor, John Wayne.
Brooks soon gave up show business altogether and took a job as a sales clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City. In the mid-fifties, some film critics and cultists began rediscovering her European films. Brooks, who had become quite reclusive, was amazed to find her reputation suddenly soaring. Buoyed by this recognition, she became a film student and curator and took up writing for a film magazine, gaining a considerable reputation for her insightful pieces.
Fritz Korner, who played Dr. Schön, apparently took a personal dislike to Brooks, but, if so, that only served to intensify the emotion of his performance. Alice Roberts provided a subtle performance as the lesbian Countess, avoiding tacky stereotypes but effectively revealing her desire for Lulu.
Bottom-Line: This is the most engrossing silent film that I've ever seen, though not necessarily the greatest. It is amazingly modern in its feel, largely because of the smoldering performance by Brooks, who became known, ever after, as Lulu Brooks. With a coquettish childlike innocence combined with sensual glances and smiles, she's a sight to behold. The lack of dialog and the expressionistic style confer a dreamlike quality to the film, but it's a riveting sort of dream that keeps viewers spellbound. Pandora's Box is silent with occasional English language dialog screens and has a running time of 110 minutes. I highly recommend it, even for those with little prior experience with silent films. This one feels very modern and is highly entertaining.
*************************************************************************************************
You might want to check out these other excellent films from Germany:
This classic silent German film tells of Lulu a sensual chorus girl whose uncontainable sexual power literally destroys every man with whom she has an...More at Family Video
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.