Il vaso di Pandora

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.

I had heard "Pandora's Box" called a German Expressionist film, the class to which such great and outlandish films as Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", and Lang's "Metropolis" and the sadly dated but very interesting "Nosferatu" by Walter Murnau, I expected it to have the same elements-- extremely stylized acting and direction, bizarre artificial sets, and a general atmosphere of utter surreality. So I was very surprised at and fascinated with the naturalism of G. W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box", particularly with Louise Brook's celebrated performance as the cheerful, childlike, tragic femme fatale Lulu. Pabst's direction is essentially modern, even without the use of sound. While sometimes the direction and acting in even "Caligari" and "Metropolis" provoke laughter from the bemused audience,"Pandora's Box" holds the viewer spellbound, and its not infrequent humor is intentional. Like other German Expressionist silent films, "Pandora's Box" has a dark message. From the beginning, however, it is far less stylized, and the settings look like they might actually have existed in the 1920's, instead of only in someone's dream world. Nevertheless the film makes excellent use of Expressionistic lighting and chiaroscuro, which highlights the visions of fruitless and immoral frivolity, desperate gambling and unhealthy sexuality.

Altogether, this film is beautiful and absorbing, and even if nothing else, it should not be missed for Louise Brooks' superb performance.

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.

For his movie "Die Büchse Der Pandora (Panodra's Box)", G.W. Pabst took together the tragedies "Der Erdgeist" and "Die Büchse Der Pandora", forming the famous Lulu-diptych written by German dramatist Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), an important ancestor of literary expressionism, who wrote amongst other works "Frühlings Erwachen" that caused many scandals.

What is congenial about this movie, is not only the fact, that Louise Brooks is doubtless the best Lulu ever seen (in theater as well as on the screen), but how G.W. Pabst managed to amalgamate this two literary masterpieces of the time of sexual liberation in Europe.

It is a real pity, that not more of Pabst work can be reached in the US and that most of his work is not available at all on DVD.

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.