Die Büchse der Pandora

Plot synopsis:
Pandoras Box leaps into the story of Lulu (Louise Brooks), a vivacious and alluring young woman. Lulu supports herself in a the apartment where we first meet her, funished nicely, including a painting of her as well as a large menorah. In the very first act what at first seems to be a pathetic beggar comes to the door, but it turns out that he's actually her conniving old pimp Schigolch (Carl Goetz) who's got plenty of money - and as the story plays out he helps himself to her money from the many companions she keeps. She is very cozy with him, though perhaps he would prefer more, and she refers to him as her first "patron". It is Lulu and her 'patron' who are behind the scenes in this movie. At the start Lulu's lover is the prestigious Dr. Ludwig Schoen (Fritz Kortner). Dr. Schoen comes to break their relationship, already scandalous, as he is engaged to be married to a woman who we soon meet, the minister of the Interior Herr von Zarnikos' daughter Charlotte Marie Adelaide. But Lulu won't be so easily dismissed. This is facilitated by Schigolgh's timely introduction of Lulu her to Rodrigo Quast (Carl Raschig) a variety acrobat that wants to put Lulu in one of his shows, and Lulu frankly admires his muscles.Lulu had become close friends with Dr. Schoen's son Alwa. In a possessive form of jealousy Dr. Schoen advises Alwa not to let Lulu do her trapeze act, but instead to put her in Alwas' revue.At the revue we find everyone glamorously dressed for the lavish dance variety show. There is a hustle and bustle backstage and when Lulu catches a glimpse of Dr. Schoens fiancée Charlotte, Lulu refuses to go on. This frustrates Dr. Schoen and he rushes her into an empty prop room where she plays a temper tantrum as she throws herself onto a bedded area against the prop shelves. She kicks her legs about, pulls and tugs at Dr. Schoen in a teasing manner that causes him to succumb to her after she sexily bites at his finger. They kiss and embrace and then the door opens allowing the director, Alwa and Charlotte to glimpse Dr. Schoens infidelity. This pleases Lulu as she smiles mischievously to everyone. She stands curtly and prances out of the room with a smug sense of satisfaction. She goes on with the performance while they are left to sort out the emotions they all are suffering over Lulu.The events of Dr. Schoens life are traumatically altered as he realizes that he is doomed to be in love with Lulu, which will in some way lead to his downfall. At their wedding reception Lulu is radiant in her white dress and her friends Schigolch and Rodrigo are in attendance. They both get quite intoxicated and Schigolch is determined to place a rose on the brides bed. In doing this it leads to a private party in the bedroom. Dr. Schoen enters the room to find Lulu his wife sitting in the lap of the debauched Schigolch with a Drunken Rodrigo nearby. This is too much for Dr. Schoen to allow. He silently has a mental snap, reaches for his hand gun and points it at Schigolch and Rodrigo but Lulu protests that he cannot shoot Schigologh - he's her father! Schifolch and Rodrigo scramble out of the room and into the continuing party in the adjoining room. Dr. Schoens threatens both Rodrigo and Schigolch by waving the firearm at them through the living room reception party until they exit the party. This shocks the guests and they all decide to leave. While this is going on, his son Alwa declares his love to Lulu and invites her to go with him on his train trip. He cradles his head on her lap and appears in ecstasy as she sits caressing him tenderly. Dr. Schoen goes back to the room and quickly warns his son not to miss his train. After Alwa leaves the room Dr. Schoen deliberately moves towards Lulu with an insane look in his eyes. She realizes he is not of right mind. For the first time she realizes that her behavior has gone too far as he jams the handgun into her delicate hand. He orders her to kill herself. This leads to a struggle which ends in Dr. Schoen being shot in the belly by his own weapon. As he slowly dies Alwa returns and as his father clutches his son in his last breaths he warns Alwa about Lulu and that he will be next.Lulu is charged by the courts and the prosecutor wants the death penalty. During the trial the prosecutor likens Lulu to the Greek Goddess Pandora an expert at flattery who opened the box given to her by the Gods and let evil loose upon the world. While the defense portrays Lulu as innocent, the prosecutor sees her as Pandora, and accuses her of leading Dr. Schoen to his demise. The trial ends up with Lulu getting a minimal prison sentence of five years, however her friends have other plans and they create a ruse by pulling the fire alarm, which provides them the chance to break Lulu free from her captivity.Lulu returns home to the scene of her crime as a fugitive. Alwa returns and wonders how she could feel comfortable in the place his fathers blood was shed. She picks up the phone ready to turn herself in until Alwa takes over the call to stop her from giving her location up. He pretends to the state prosecutor that he has not seen her and Lulu takes this as a sign that she is still in control of his affections. He succumbs to her feminine power, she leaves him under complete control within her arms. She agrees to go with him as they hug romantically.On the ship ride Lulu is greeted by a nefarious gentleman who works behind the scenes to use her vulnerability of having a bounty on her head to sell her to an Egyptian who owns a place in Cairo where discriminating customers will take pleasure in Lulus company. Meanwhile Rodrigo is trying to drum up capital for another show and he tries to strong arm it out of Lulu. In her dismay over his domineering threats, she reverts to Schigolch for help who in his sleazy manner sits her on his lap telling her to cry it all away. Then he has an idea and they use Alwa to cheat at cards in the ships casino. Alwa is ultimately caught at the table and then pandemonium occurs as they try and get off the ship and escape the detectives searching for the fugitive Lulu.
During the chaos onboard the ship they manage to sneak off in a row boat. It is Christmas time and a tall, handsome man in a long trench coat travels the foggy night. He comes upon a large group of towns people outside by the decorated Christmas tree drinking hot cider in celebration of the season. He meets a young woman and they share glances. Lulu, Schigolch, and Alwa are held up in a drafty room with only a bottle of whisky, some dried bread, and a candle. Lulu sits and does her make-up. Later she is being talked up by a man on the street and when he leaves, Schigolch tells Lulu that it is a shame; because he may have provided them some money. He is slyly conferring to Lulu that it is time for her to take on some customers for their survival on the streets. This is not a good time to be walking the streets as there have been several girls and women that have been killed by an unknown assailant who is known in history as Jack the Ripper. The tall handsome man that shared in cider with the young woman in the Christmas gathering meets Lulu and she immediately takes a liking to him. As she leads him to the room upstairs he holds a knife behind his back. He is the killer and she is unaware. He clenches the knife tightly overcome with an insatiable need to stab her dead, but her kindness overcomes his desire to kill. His maniacal episode passes. He drops the blade and continues up the stairs to be with Lulu. In the room they share an intimacy without words. It is a real affection, but as they embrace, a knife is on the table glimmering in the light. This sets off the chain of circumstances that ignite the killer within the seemingly gentle man. He reaches for it and as he kisses Lulu he stabs her to death.The ripper leaves the room and passes Alwa outside in the doorway. He continues to walk off into the foggy night, while Alwa presses his head to the wall upset that Lulu must resort to selling herself for their survival, and for the situation he finds himself in as a result of his love for Lulu. Schigolch sits in a local tavern as he watches the marching band go by in the street; he finally gets to eat a Christmas pudding. As Lulu lay dead alone in the drafty room; Alwas lost in his obsession over Lulu as he despairingly walks off on the streets alone, cold in the dark. --By Joseph A. Perez

Tags: cult, avant garde, murder, violence, plot twist

Review:
Lulu, the protagonist of _Pandora's box_ portrayed by Louise Brooks, lives beyond the constraints of time.
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..
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.
W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box", particularly with Louise Brook's celebrated performance as the cheerful, childlike, tragic femme fatale Lulu.
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.
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.
Newlinsky) in the beginning of Lulu's downfall."Die Büchse der Pandora" is a tragic masterpiece by Georg Wilhelm Pabst with the beautiful and talented Louise Brooks in the lead role.
Hollywood probably took this up from Dietrich's persona in another German film, Blue Angel from the following year, the heartless diva who presents herself in a way that will satisfy her capricious whims.This is different though, and it is more stunning for this, the trick being that we see the world from the eyes of an innocent woman as she becomes shaped into a femme fatale.
Dual worlds linked by the turning of karmic wheels; from inside a cheerful, innocent woman who we know to be basically good and trying to live life, but who at the same time appears provocative, alluring, exuding sex, and therefore by her very nature, by the fact that she is the person she was born to be, seems to lull men into the kind of stupor where they can dream only her, a dream so intoxicating that in turn traps her in her image.
It also suffers because the relationship between Lulu (Louise Brooks) and the two main male characters (Fritz Kortner as the elder Schon, the press baron, and Franz Lederer, as his son) lacks real feeling.
Dietrich (who was enraged by the refusal) was also too well known in Germany, whereas Pabst and Nero-Film could engineer a massive publicity campaign on Brooks' behalf because she was said to be a great American star (who hardly anyone had heard of in Europe) and was the Acme edition of a stateside flapper.
It is often called intoxicating and shimmering, and people get this impression of it because of its light.A colourful cast of decadent misfits accompany showgirl and prostitute Lulu (Louise Brooks, who has an incredibly charismatic presence, was forever nicknamed Lulu after this role) in her major misadventure, her love for a married man, which is what opens pandora's box in this tale.
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.
Anyway, this film is done at a time in Germany before Hitler's rise to power and the second World War. The film itself is always worth viewing because the story of Pandora's Box is about Louise Brooks' character and the fate that awaits her.
No. Louise Brooks is not a Pabst invention, and neither is her performance in Pandora's Box. What Pabst did, quite simply, was find his 'Lulu'.
that is, for this act.From then on we see Lulu trying to escape trouble and capture from the authorities for a crime she actually didn't commit (it's one of those scenes that sounds far more simple than it looks), and either getting by fine like at a gambling joint with her fellow travelers, Rodrigo the theater promoter and Alwa, or not as it turns out at Christmas-time.
Pabst doesn't ever paint much of a happy time for Lulu, and it's just the way it should be in such waters: Lulu is a free spirit, at least in theory, and she loves (or thrives on) drawing in men into her grasp, except for those few that she actually doesn't really want at all, and ultimately she becomes a prostitute in spite of her aim early on to be a dancer and performer on stage.The story itself, while strong and potent with the kind of depth and misery that reminds one of other German expressionist films of the time, isn't even the best thing about the movie.
But it's Pabst as a director of movement in cinema, how he portrays his actors on screen and gets body language and movement in a frame, the lighting and the smoke and fog, the sets expressing place and class, and how he casts it that makes it so great a film.
It's a signal of what makes a movie amazing when one can see a filmmaker elevating a torrid drama into real depth, pain and anguish and lust, not to mention the dangerous exuberance of the period, and that it works even today.There is Gunther Krampf's cinematography as one piece of what makes it work, and how the rhythm of the shots in the editing is done in classical structure of scenes (sometimes a scene will pick up the intensity, such as the Jack the Ripper scene near the very end, and it becomes exciting much like, or more-so, a modern melodrama today), and, depending on which music you listen to with the film on the Criterion DVD (I picked improv piano, which turned out well) it provides a perfect kick with the material.
Another star or actress would have made it interesting, but Brooks, who would only go on to star in a few other movies worth mentioning (also directed by Pabst), is fearless with the character, and makes her as recognizable in the history of German film as Dietrich in The Blue Angel.
I had tried twice before to watch this movie and frankly found it boring,so much so that I had never made it to the end.I had even bought it on DVD and sold it.Recently however,I decided to give it one more try and bought the new special edition DVD.I started to watch the film,found it to be dragging slightly but was determined to watch the film the whole way through.I made the right choice,this is a very good movie,not perfect but well worth viewing.It is the story of Lulu,on the face of it a lady very easy to understand.She is a kept woman,a woman of low virtue...or so it seems.As we get to know the character of Lulu we learn that she is actually quite complex.She is a user,she is used,manipulative,teasing,spoilt,child like but paradoxically all woman.The story does drag a little at times but it also shows the life of a woman that you just have to know what her outcome will be.It is in general a fine film.The cast is fine with Franz Kortner showing the intensity he needs to as Dr. Schon.The fact that in real life he couldn't stand his leading lady makes his performance more interesting.Franz Lederer deals with the character of Alwa in a competent way as he becomes obsessed with Lulu.Carl Goetz has a ball as Schigolch although we are never too sure just what part he has played in Lulu's life.She even describes him as her father at one point.Alice Roberts makes an impact in every scene she is in as the lesbian costume designer Countess Geschwitz.As Jack the Ripper Gustav Diesel shows a man struggling with his insane desires with eye popping conviction.This film is considered to be director G W Pabst's most famous work and he does deserve enormous credit.But this is where we come to Louise Brooks who plays Lulu.She IS the movie and it would barely register without her presence.She is convincing in every scene and the very fact the Louise Brooks herself thought she couldn't act probably helped her here as she is just playing herself.She obviously does herself an injustice as she is fantastic in this role and deserves to be part of cinema legend.Undeniably beautiful,the camera adores her and she is simply wonderful.Pabst once told her that she would end up like Lulu and to a degree he was right as her career nosedived and she became a virtual recluse.Whether she hated Hollywood or Hollywood hated her is debatable.But she had the role of her life here and totally made the role her own.We can ask for no more than that..
I'm really not a big fan of German expressionism in film, nor silent movies for that matter, so I regard PANDORA'S BOX as an interesting but highly flawed study of female perversity embodied by Lulu, as played by LOUISE BROOKS.
She seems to be a woman without a conscience--and rather than compare her to Greta Garbo or any other screen greats I would say her Lulu character resembles Rita Hayworth's amoral nature in GILDA--a woman of mystery with loose morals.The story is just plain awful, heavy-handed stuff about an amoral girl during the Jazz age in Europe who seems to attract men like moths around a light.
The film follows the exploits of Lulu, a showgirl (and most likely "a woman of the streets") whose beauty and sexuality captivates the men (and a few women) in Berlin, while at the same time brings down the men who become so attached to her, including her husband (who broke off his engagement to marry Lulu only to shot accidentally on their wedding night), his son (who fell so madly in love with Lulu that he lost his fortune, and nearly his life, gambling), and Countess Geshwitz(harboring her lesbian feelings for Lulu, while trying to save her financially).
Of course, a silent film, poetic like this one, is closer to ballet than films would become later, so it is a fine movie in a sense anyway.However, Louise Brooks plays Lulu as literally wholesome.
Brooks is exactly the same from beginning to end, and her portrayal is more like some child-whore Alain Robbe-Grillet would possibly imagine among the many in his novels.Well, everyone seems to think she's wonderful in the part, comments astonished me by saying she was the greatest actress who ever lived, beyond Garbo and Dietrich.I suppose this may be true (except that she is beyond Garbo and Dietrich, which is just ridiculous.) Nevertheless, I see that she plays only a waif, never a prostitute of any kind, and it is not convincing: the Countess says something about 'spending your whole life in cabarets' as means of defending Lulu.
With touches of 'The Little Match Girl.'It has not been my experience that it is innocence in women that 'drives men mad.'Only toward the end does Pabst's poetics really fully open, with a taste of Christmas Cake, with the extravagantly handsome Francis Lederer walking away from the scene (he seems not to know that Lulu has been killed, only that she has been with another man).
The content, based upon the plays by Wedekind, deserves a certain amount of attention, but, when I was viewing the film, hopefully like many other of its buffs, my principal focus was drawn upon the character of Lulu and the performance by Louise Brooks - one word must be said before further analysis - magical!
Things I love about this film:Louise Brooks gives an extraordinary performance, as unaffected and natural as any I've ever seen.
Lulu is an incredible character, played magnificently by Louise Brooks, who is also one of the most beautiful, pure looking, actress that ever lived.
A real femme fatale so to speak and man, married or not, would do anything for her, even acts of violence.As it always goes with characters like Lulu in movies, her character does not end up well.
By her own admission Louise Brooks didn't really know what she was doing, but she and Pabst put it all on the screen, whatever it was.The story is melodramatic, flirts with the ludicrous, creeps to a crawl in spots, but Brooks's Lulu remains fresh and refreshing to the "bitter" end.Pabst's film-making was brilliant, in its own way, of course.
Lulu too appears ultra modern and Pabst's selection of an American (flapper) actress to star in a German expressionist film was a very good move.
The story follows the life of a high class prostitute named Lulu (Louise Brooks) through her beginnings in German high society, through her tragic marriage to a prominent doctor (Fritz Kortner) and finally her inevitable decline to the streets of London and her ultimate tragic ending.
Based on the play "Lulu" about a prostitute in the days of Jack the Ripper, this film is an attempt to show the prostitute as a victim of those who are using her.I have to admit that I found Louise Brookes's performance very lacklustre, and her sexuality little more than that of a sack of unwashed potatoes.
I thought that the ending when Lulu (Brook's character) is to be murdered by Jack the Ripper(?), would recover the film's plot.
So, too, Lulu who makes her way through Pandora's Box as a modern woman who uses her sexuality to make a place for herself while ignoring the possible consequences of her actions.
W. Pabst carefully builds up the atmosphere or simply invites us to dwell, like the male characters in the film, on Ms. Brooks' luminous beauty.
G.W. Pabst's classic, Pandora's Box (1929) is a must-see for Louise Brooks who plays the title role to ravishing perfection.
It really did.I also found that Louise Brooks' character of "Lulu", the low-life hooker (who radiated nothing but the purest, sweetest innocence imaginable) to be such a preposterous contradiction that she soon came across to me like the parody of a pathetic clown.Louise Brooks (who actually had quite a likable screen presence) was one of those unfortunate actresses who I think the movie industry really wasted by casting her in tiresome junk like 1929's "Pandora's Box".Is it any wonder - In 1938 - Louise Brooks (who was so fed up with being a film actress) retired from the business (at the age of 32) - Never to return?.
Both told a story of a care-free, and careless, woman brought down by a society that had different plans for her, and Brooks was the perfect face to channel such a dangerous force of nature.Here she plays Lulu, a young dancer and aspiring performer engaging in an affair with the soon-to-be-married newspaper publisher Dr. Ludwig Schon (Fritz Kortner).
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman (Louise Brooks) whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her."Pandora's Box" had previously been adapted for the screen by Arzén von Cserépy in 1921 in Germany under the same title, with Danish actress Asta Nielsen in the role of Lulu.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst's 1929 classic silent film 'Die Büchse der Pandora' and Louise Brooks' remarkable performance as Lulu will always be out there to reminds us this..
Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent film about the life of Lulu, a beautiful, lively, gregarious but opportunistic and manipulative woman who gets everything she wants with her seductive charms.
Watching an older Louise Brooks talk about this movie (and her own career) I get the hint that even while she may have been as talented as she obviously points at, her fate, as Lulu's, was pre-ordained, but crucial only as to serve as a step to the modernization of woman in general.As an end-note, I saw this movie last Wednesday evening at the Film Forum, and I have to note Steven Sterner's fantastic, kinetic score playing live to the action in PANDORA'S BOX.
I'm not sure I'd have liked "Pandora's Box" any better with any other star.But I didn't much like the film, and I'm uncertain how much of that is down to its style -- 'German expressionism' -- and how much results from the nihilistic nature of the Lulu story: realistically, neither this nor the opera were ever going to be a pleasant watch.
Pandora's Box. I found this German made silent film listed in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, the title didn't suggest anything to me automatically, apart from possibly the famous mythological story being involved, but I watched out of curiosity.
In the Pabst's film, which is a perfect modern realization of the ancient Pandora's myth, Louise Brooks plays Lulu as "a beautiful evil", "all-gifted" perfect woman-child desirable by every man (and woman), and unaware of the disastrous effects of her sex appeal.
Louise Brooks' performance under G.W. Pabst's inspiring directing makes the film a real cinematic treasure and perhaps the sexiest movie ever made.
Pabst's silent film masterpiece and morality conundrum, Pandora's Box. For over eight decades, film reviewers have written reams about the sordid tale of sad wanton Lulu, living her life of hedonism, which spirals towards its inevitable tragic end.