Die Büchse der Pandora

Lulu, the protagonist of _Pandora's box_ portrayed by Louise Brooks, lives beyond the constraints of time. She was radiant, outrageous - an icon of modernity that seemed to transcend all time and place. She challenged sexual conventions, and became a screen seductress like no other - not through the traditional devices of the femme fatale, but rather through her bold, kittenish innocence.

This portrayal of innocence is largely what makes her performance both powerful and unique. She's outrageously excessive and provocative, but because she engenders such sympathy, we cannot fail to identify with her. In a sense, she seduces us as she seduces the men whom she encounters. That identification, despite her destructiveness, is much of what makes this film so compelling; we love her despite ourselves.

There are three films that permanently altered my sense of the power of the silent cinema: Sunrise (Murnau); The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer), and this triumph.

This film reaches the highest pinnacle of the cinematic experience; it transforms the viewer through its indelible images and hypnotic captivation.

I can only wish that the first time viewer has the pleasure of experiencing this film and Brooks' immortal performance in a theater with live accompaniment as I did at the Virginia Film Festival.

One of the last great silent films this is a German movie that is surprisingly short on cinematic expressionism and long on the glamorous, sultry, hypnotic beauty of Louise Brooks. It is her dynamic performance and fallen Goddess looks that makes her, and by attachment Pandora's Box, a wonder to behold.

The thematic sexual content is handled with reverence rather than raunchiness and it is her glorious, giddy, and sincere playful naive nature that is compelling. She not only, just by proximity, seduces any man in close contact, as well as the audience with a childish charm of calming cuteness but unleashes primal desire as well as a protective desire manifested by her magnetism.

The film is long and deeply depressing but it carries us through to her inevitable descent and destruction with so much pathos that it is hard to detach oneself from her destiny and want this obviously playful, not prey-full, soul to live happily ever after. But this is not a fairy-tale and she is not Snow White. This is Greek tragedy.

No beauty has ever graced the screen like that of Louise Brooks. No film has ever validated that beauty like "Pandora's Box". It took Pabst to recognize that this wild, uninhibited American flapper could turn in a performance like Lulu in this film. It is for the ages and time has not dimmed it at all. She brings Lulu to life with such joie de vivre and also such poignancy, that it hurts to watch it....especially when you realize that Brooks' career would soon turn into a shambles when she returned to Hollywood. If you don't have an appreciation of silent films, you need to watch this one and you will see the true art form that existed before "talkies" came into vogue. If "Pandora's Box" does not convince you, you can't be convinced.

Besides the grim fatalist moral lesson, the film is lacking Expressionist ideals, and is more in tune with later Weimar cinema. The fact that it has a female lead certainly separates it from the classic Expressionist works. And shadowing and landscape techniques are much more modernized reflecting Weimar's embrace of technology and immersion into consumer culture. Even today, there are few female actors that represent such a powerful will and dominant presence as Louise Brooks did in her masterful performance. The film was not very popular at its time of production and I wonder how much that has to do with this strong female presence.

This feature has quite an unusual feel to it - generally downbeat, but engrossing, and filled with sordid characters and settings, yet somehow artistic. Moreover, it's not downbeat or sordid in the pretentious, empty way that characterizes so many recent movies. Rather, despite portraying its characters in a largely unfavorable light, it neither exploits them nor glorifies them. These persons are shown simply to be what they are, and while there is a certain inevitability about many of the things that befall them, there is a thoughtfulness as well. You would not want to be like, or perhaps even meet, most of these characters, and yet you want to wish them better luck.

Louise Brooks gets most of the attention (both in the movie itself and from those who discuss it). The "Pandora's Box" image for her character is appropriate, in that Lulu is never ill-intentioned nor malicious, and yet she often puts the other characters in difficult situations, just by being who she is and acting naturally. All of the other significant characters are defined largely in terms of their responses to her and relationships with her, and all of the characters (including Lulu) have very evident faults and make some very preventable blunders. The result is an unusual and very interesting movie. Director G.W. Pabst deserves the credit most of all for creating the atmosphere, putting everything together, and making it work so well.