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.

Describing a film like PANDORA'S BOX is difficult. As a sterling example of German Expressionism you know it's not a piece of fluff. It's complex, deep, and not for the sitcom and Star Trek crowds. You have to lose yourself in it, and that is to lose yourself in Louise Brooks as PANDORA'S BOX is her movie. Not to diminish the genius of G.W. Pabst but it is Brooks that dominates this movie like so few actors can do. Without Brooks this movie could not exist.

Whew. And what's it about you may ask? It's a morality play made and set in the Berlin of 1928. While I watched the film I could not shake the knowledge of the cataclysm that was to be unleashed on Germany in five short years. In a way Pabst knew it too. (I was particularly weirded by the prominent display of a menorah in one of the Berlin apartment sets.)

I recommend that everyone that loves movies should at some point find the video store in their neighborhood that stocks old movies, rent PANDORA'S BOX, and experience it for themselves.

Things I love about this film:

• Louise Brooks gives an extraordinary performance, as unaffected and natural as any I've ever seen. She's seductive, but has such a buoyant simplicity about her, and it's not the simplicity or innocence of a girl as in other screen stars who channel this as part of their allure, she's more like an elemental force of nature.

• The scene in act three when she's backstage with the newspaper publisher (Fritz Kortner) who has decided to end their affair and marry someone else is one example of this. She's refused to go onstage for them, and while arguing, turns her back to him and eventually lies down, the metallic strap of her outfit making a large thin Y on her otherwise bare back. We can just feel his desire to kiss the back of her neck, and after some tussling around, soon he is kissing her. It's at this moment that his son (Francis Lederer) and fiancée (Daisy D'Ora) walk in, and the look that Brooks gives them is just mind-blowing. I cannot imagine better acting; she's defiant and yet bemused, passionate and yet detached.

• Another great example is in act four, when the son tells her he can't live without her. Her eyes are captured so perfectly by Pabst, who adds a sparkle in their reflection which is almost demonic, and yet she has such tenderness as puts his head in her lap.

• On the surface it may seem to be a morality tale, but it's not with the way Pabst directed it, and this includes the wise casting of Brooks over Marlene Dietrich (who was apparently literally in Pabst's office when Brooks finally agreed to take the part). Lulu, Brooks's character, is never judged for pursuing pleasure. During her trial it's the prosecutor who likens her to Pandora, but the comparison is hollow, and we don't really believe it. The sexuality of the character is so natural it's presented as a sort of purity, which is a very rare thing in films of the period (or any period).

• By contrast, it's the male characters who are portrayed as evil, and it's because their pleasures are all tainted by exploitation, greed, or violence. There's the hypocrisy of Kortner's character who carries on with Brooks but tells his son, she's not the kind of girl one marries, and then later asks her to kill herself. Her first 'patron', an old man (Carl Goetz) who likely took advantage of her when she was a child, and who has no moral qualms about her prostituting herself late in the movie. The son, who starts off pure (so much so that Brooks comments "Alwa is my best friend, the only one who never wants anything from me. Or do you want nothing from me because you don't love me?"), but who we later see addicted to gambling, despondent, and not defending her. The trapeze artist (Krafft-Raschig) who blackmails her, and in one scene leans over her ominously with a giant alligator appearing over his head, mounted to the wall in the background. Another acquaintance who tries to sell her to a creepy Egyptian brothel owner, claiming that he's "looking out for her" because the authorities won't think of searching for her in Cairo. And then of course the final man she encounters, who initially is so stunned and touched by her kindness that he shows her real tenderness, though ultimately he can't control himself. It's all pretty damning, and more an indictment of the male of the species.

• Pabst has lots of great moments too, getting the most out of this story and telling it in a pretty creative way. The scene of the Kortner confronting Brooks on their wedding day when he finds her old patrons and his son playing around with her has the camera drifting ever so slightly in and out of focus, just as we can imagine him reeling from all of his emotions. The accidental shooting, with that beautiful work of art we see first on the left at a dramatic angle, and then in the background. And lastly, the handling of Brooks in that scene at the end, starting with her flashing that radiant smile with a sparkle in her eyes on the way up to her room, then later gazing at the candle with her chin on her hand and looking upward, and finally a remarkable restrained murder scene with just her hand falling away. It's brilliant, and Pabst continuing on with this to see the celebration of Christmas and people singing 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' really adds contrast and heightens pathos. The feeling conveyed is not one of well, she deserved it for her wantonness, it's sadness that such a pure creature has been so abused and snuffed out.

• The openness of the lesbian character (Alice Roberts) is refreshing, and in keeping with the lack of moral judgment present in the film. As an aside, from reading 'Lulu in Hollywood', my understanding is that Roberts refused to look at Brooks with the requisite lust, and Pabst had to shoot her looking at him and then cut that in. Regardless, Roberts and Pabst were breaking new ground here.

• Lastly, aside from the great acting, Brooks is simply iconic in this film. Her short bob and bangs look had considerable influence at the time, and according to TCM's Ben Mankiewicz, was also studied and leveraged by Liza Minelli for Cabaret (1972). She's also very stylish in her wedding dress, at the trial in widow's garb, as well as when her hair is not in bangs to disguise herself while on the run.

Great actress, great film.

Louise Brooks may have never studied acting, but every actor should study her. How much they can learn is questionable though. This dancer/chorus girl turned film star was one of those rare creatures who probably couldn't have told you what she was doing, even if she thought long and hard about it (and Brooks was an intelligent, articulate woman.)

Like a great natural athlete, she simply could do it, and do it better than almost anyone else. Pandora's Box is the greatest existing record of her technique and remarkable talents.

On the surface, a run of the mill story of a femme fatale who destroys the men around her, this G. W. Pabst film is complicated, dark, moody, and seemingly packed with contradictory messages. Well acted and well directed by Pabst, it nonetheless would have been forgotten decades ago, had it not been for its star.

Brooks was one of the most beautiful, most photogenic woman to ever appear on the screen. From some angles, her face is so remarkable it almost doesn't seem real.

Her personality exceeds her beauty and it was the perfect personality to capture the childish, petulant, self centered, yet sweetly innocent kid who is the embodiment of every pretty girl who wants what she wants, regardless of the consequences.

Pabst' film, based on two German stage plays, is also a fascinating look at male sexual obsession, at men unable to control their lust who want to destroy the object of that lust before she destroys them.

Yet all the messages aside, it is simply Brooks totally natural performance that in the end will be remembered here.

Ironically, Brooks was really no more than a starlet in her American silent film days and it took her three European films to elevate her name above the title. And those films were hardly seen in the U.S. in their day. Yet today, women whose names were household words in America in the silent era, like Coleen Moore and even Clara Bow, are all but forgotten, while the Brooks legend grows stronger each year.

While Brooks has benefitted from a well written biography and the adoration of much of the press, a close examination of Pandora's Box proves she was much more than just hype.

This movie is one of the great treasures of the cinema, and Louise Brooks is one of the most talented and most fascinating actresses to ever appear in movies, on either side of the Atlantic.