Short Take: Pandora's Box

The silent film Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, is a great example of an actor taking a famous character and making it so completely their own that no one else is imaginable in the part. The character, Lulu, was the protagonist of a pair of popular German plays, Earth Angel and Pandora's Box, by Frank Wedekind. She is a free-spirited, promiscuous young woman who inevitably brings ruin to those who fall in love with her. The 22-year-old Brooks, a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer, was three years into a Hollywood career when Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst brought her to Berlin to make the film. She had a distinctive look: a lithe, athletic figure and, most famously, a carefully maintained Dutch-bob haircut that defined the "flapper" style for women of the period. She was also, as the film demonstrated, perhaps the most fluidly expressive performer to ever appear in movies. As Lulu, one sees her beauty, her graceful movements, and her spontaneous, flirtatious manner, and one immediately knows why the film's men (and one woman) are so smitten with her. The funniest moment is when the prosecutor at her murder trial has to fight his attraction to her while presenting his case. Brooks gives Lulu an innocent quality, but she's not entirely without guile. An unforgettable bit is the triumphant smirk Brooks wears when Lulu scandalizes a lover's fiancée into breaking off their engagement. But most impressively, Brooks makes Lulu's happy-go-lucky brazenness all of a piece with the forlorn air she has in the later scenes, when the character is turning tricks in a London slum. It's a marvelous performance, and deserving of its iconic status. G. W. Pabst gives Brooks a terrific stage. His style is generally described as German Expressionist, and he certainly has a penchant for design-conscious chiaroscuro lighting and slightly unreal sets. But he also maintains a naturalistic tone with the characters. The actors keep everything fairly understated, and never veer into hyperbole. In many ways, this is a silent dramatic film for people who as a rule dislike them. The cast also includes Fritz Gortner, Francis Lederer, Alice Roberts, and Carl Goetz. The art direction is credited to Andrej Andrejew and Gottlieb Hesch. Günther Krampf provided the cinematography. Pabst collaborated on the scenario with Ladislaus Vajda. The Criterion Collection DVD release gives a viewer four choices for the musical accompaniment. Peter Raben's "modern orchestral score" complements the film the best.