Lulu

Controversial Polish art-house director Borowczyk brings to life Wedekind's infamous femme fatale in a wonderful little film that is at once funny, despairing, beautiful, ugly... it's about sexual obsession, yet never exploitative or crass.

Filmed much like a play in three acts, there is much thought in the casting, music, and sets. You really get transported to the era.

Sadly forgotten, and little seen by movie fans, the one flaw I could find was the dubbing, as one reviewer mentioned. An international co- production, the use of actors from different countries meant no matter what version you watch, someone's lips will be ridiculously off from the dialogue: a common problem with European films of the 70s & 80s. I suggest the German version: since the majority of actors were (fittingly) German, including the leads, you get the maximum amount of accurate sync-sound dialogue, and can better appreciate the acting.

Hopefully, with Borowczyk's films being rediscovered, we will see a restored blu-ray soon.

Lulu is based on the same novel that G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box was adapted from. Pandora's Box is one of the greatest films ever made so Lulu was bound to suffer by comparison. Both film versions tell the tragic story of Lulu, a vivacious woman, who attracts men (and women) eventually driven to desperation by their obsessions for Lulu.

Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box radiated sensuality. She showed no bare flesh but she had a screen charisma that made the audience believe that men would follow her to their destruction. This viewer would certainly have. In the film Lulu, the character Lulu is played by Anne Bennent, who spends a fair amount of her screen time naked. Yet, for all of her bare flesh, Miss Bennent does not have one-tenth the sensuality (or the acting chops) of a fully clothed Louise Brooks. For all of its nudity, the 1980 film is less erotic than Pabst's silent adaptation from 1929.

In addition to the more erotic aspects of the story, the film Lulu is less daring in other aspects of the story. In Pandora's Box, the character of Jack the Ripper is portrayed, like Peter Lorre in M, as a sad figure, clearly mentally ill. Fifty years later in Lulu, he is just an unrepentant psychopath (admittedly, one played by the dashing Udo Kier). The 1980 film may show a step forward in breasts and pubic hair, but it's a big step back in terms of emotional depth. Watching Pandora's Box I was moved by Lulu's fall. In the film Lulu I felt nothing at all.

As somebody who just adapted LULU for comics(or at least the first part of the first play) I have to say the prudish and ignorant review that's up for this is...interesting. While it's true Borowczyk's film is not quite as good a film as PANDORA'S BOX, he doesn't seem to understand the source material, starting with his thinking that LULU was a novel. It wasn't. It was two plays, ERDGEIST & PANDORA'S BOX. The Pabst film only adapts the second of these. So the comparison is not apt.

Secondly, Brooks in PANDORA'S BOX does bare flesh, as much as a film of the time would allow. The reviewer is obviously forgetting a tussle she has with Schoen backstage where a breast gets bared. And besides, he also doesn't seem to realize nudity is common in stagings of the opera version by Alban Berg.

As for the film itself, the main flaw for me is the dubbing. The acting is not the best in the English voice actors(I am only going by this version, as it's almost impossible to find this film and that was the only one I have seen). That is sadly a common problem with films from Europe in this era. Apart from that, the film--for anyone actually familiar either with Wedekind's plays or the intention of them--captures what Wedekind was actually going for. The look of the film is lovely, especially in the opening scene in Schwarz's studio. The amount of flesh is entirely appropriate for the actual story; it fits Lulu's lack of self-consciousness, a central part of her character and the source of the tragedy in the story. Lulu is a free spirit in every way who is also a magnet for self-destructive men who use her as the occasion and excuse for their own downfall--in many ways what is most interesting about her character is that she is an inversion of the femme fatale trope, almost a critique of it. Anne Bennant manages to capture this. It is a little odd that her actual father plays her lover Schoen; fortunately there are no love scenes between them.

There are a number of flaws, chief among them being the speed at which Borowczyk goes through the story(two plays of three acts in less than 90 minutes), but the cuts he makes are in aspects of the story that aren't really missed, like the circus strongman Rodrigo. He also makes the creepiness of her dad, Schilgoch, much clearer than Pabst--who can be argued to have mangled Wedekind's story--does. Pabst makes it cute. But Schilgoch basically pimped his own daughter out and Borowczyk makes this an inescapable fact.And Udo Kier's Jack the Ripper is very much the one Wedekind wrote, Pabst's being far more sympathetic than the one in the play.

I would say the best way to deal with the films is to watch them both and to compare, but with a familiarity with Wedekind and Berg. It's well worth seeking out, and is a worthy entry in Borowczyk's catalog.