Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box
The Luminous Star Shines in Sexually-Charged 1929 Silent Classic
Dec 4, 2008
Pandora’s Box, directed by Germany’s G.W. Pabst, is among the great expressionist films produced during the disastrous Weimar regime that ruled Germany from the end of World War I to Hitler’s 1933 rise to power.
The story is based on a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, a giant of the German theatre. But casting the film’s intriguing lead character, Lulu, gave Pabst fits. He knew that playing the sexually liberated mistress of a wealthy newspaper publisher required a performer capable of conveying an open sexuality while, ironically, remaining largely unaware of her power over men.
Louise Brooks Chosen Over Marlene Dietrich
Pabst expressed interest in Brooks after seeing a routine American programmer in which she played a trapeze artist. But Paramount was negligent in relaying his inquiries to its uncooperative contract player. Pabst reluctantly was about to settle for Marlene Dietrich – whom he felt was far too explicitly (and knowingly) sexy and would turn the role into a burlesque – when word arrived Brooks indeed was interested.
The film is striking in several significant ways. First, its frank tone and treatment of sex is remarkable for 1920s cinema. (This generally is true of European-produced films of the period; about the only American film from that era to approach Pandora in that regard is Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris.)
Screen’s First Lesbian?
The script, by Ladislaus Vajda and the uncredited Pabst, is refreshingly direct in depicting a sexually-liberated mistress, her arrogant sugar daddy Schon (German film star Fritz Kortner), his good-natured but weak-willed son Alwa (Czech émigré Franz, later Francis, Lederer) and a crowd of Lulu sycophants and hangers-on.
That the film was shot in Berlin in the midst of the decadent years of the Weimar Republic – Cabaret turf – amplifies its intriguing atmosphere and production backstory. And the presence of Belgian actor Alice Roberts as Countess Geschwitz – likely the screen’s first overtly lesbian character – reveals how thoroughly urban and modern this film was for its time.
German Expressionism
Another strength of the film is the brilliant expressionist cinematography by Gunther Krampf. His lighting subtly and beautifully underscores the moods and intentions of many scenes, including (and especially) the movie’s penultimate sequence, when Lulu – reduced to streetwalker status – leads a man up deeply shadowed steps, not realizing he is Jack the Ripper. The way Krampf throws light upward against the wooden staircase enhances the drama of Lulu’s ascent to her own death. Shots like this one helped inspire countless similar moments in American films noir of the 1940s.
But by far, the film’s greatest strength is the monumental performance of Louise Brooks who, without this film, might be forgotten today since her American film roles are mostly undistinguished.
Brooks a Roaring Twenties Icon
At the time, this casting of an American in a beloved German property caused an uproar. Germans were outraged their beloved Lulu would be played by a foreigner. But Pabst’s call was absolutely the right one. Brooks was a gifted, intuitive actor whose body language (developed during her years as a dancer) and fierce intelligence (she read Schopenhauer for fun) contributed to a flawless performance highlighted by Lulu’s compelling mixture of naivete and eroticism. Such a complex, self-contradictory character would have been impossible for a lesser actor to capture.
Much has been written of the beautiful Brooks, whose black-helmet haircut became a symbol of the Roaring Twenties and whose naturalistic acting style blew away just about anyone else sharing scenes with her.
Perhaps the best source for learning more about Brooks is her own collected series of essays, Lulu in Hollywood (University of Minnesota Press), now available in an expanded edition with a foreword by Kenneth Tynan, who wrote a landmark 1979 piece about Brooks for The New Yorker magazine.
Another excellent source is author Barry Paris’ outstanding Louise Brooks, A Biography, now in paperback (University of Minnesota Press), which recounts in remarkable detail her fascinating and often twisted life story.
Admittedly, Pandora’s Box is a dark and downbeat look at the lost souls of Berlin between the wars. But it is also an artistic triumph, one of the truly great films of the silent era. And it is a showcase for Louise Brooks, rescued by this film from obscurity and restored to a place alongside the exceptionally talented few in movie history whose work have inspired and challenged hearts and minds everywhere.
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