Pandora's Box (1929)

Interesting facts

• Based on: Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, and starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer. The film follows Lulu, a seductive young woman whose uninhibited nature brings ruin to herself and those who love her. It is based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora.

Production

Pandora's Box had previously been adapted for the screen by Arzén von Cserépy in 1921 in Germany under the same title, with Asta Nielsen in the role of Lulu. As there was a musical, plays and other cinema adaptations at the time, the story of Pandora's Box was well known. This allowed writer-director G. W. Pabst to take liberties with the story.

Pabst searched for months for an actress to play the lead character of Lulu. After seeing American actress Louise Brooks portray a circus performer in the 1928 Howard Hawks film A Girl in Every Port, Pabst tried to get her on loan from Paramount Pictures. His offer was not made known to Brooks by the studio until she left Paramount over a salary dispute.

The film was made in Berlin at the Nero-Film Studio between October 17 and November 23, 1928.

In shooting the film, Pabst drew on Brooks' background as a dancer with the pioneering modern dance ensemble Denishawn, "choreographing" the movement in each scene and limiting her to a single emotion per shot. Pabst was deft in manipulating his actors: he hired tango musicians to inspire Brooks between takes, coached a reluctant Alice Roberts through the lesbian sequences, and appeased Fritz Kortner, who did not hide his dislike for Brooks.

Tensions rose between the performers as well, with Fritz Kortner refusing to speak to Brooks on the set. Per Brooks' own recollection, "Kortner, like everybody else on the production, thought I had cast some blinding spell over Pabst that allowed me to walk through my part... Kortner hated me.

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