Rent Pandora's Box (1929)

Classic Late Silent. - Pandora's Box review by Steve

There's something about silent cinema which promotes performances which have become mythic. And Louise Brooks as the tragic courtesan Lulu, falling slowly through hedonistic Weimar Berlin, is one of these. Brooks was monolingual and from Wichita, Kansas, so... a long way from home. But she flawlessly captures the spirit of capricious, sensual spontaneity.

Lulu is a waif who only has her sexuality to exploit to survive. She leads a coterie of crooked oddballs who also get by in the only ways they know. She has become rated as a feminist symbol. My feeling is the film- adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind- is more broadly critical of inequality, and the hypocrisy of German bourgeois society.

Now, at least to non-German audiences, it's GW Pabst's film which most represents the divine decadence of '20s Germany. Even though Wedekind's play dates from 1904. There is a prominent lesbian character. Lulu is compulsively promiscuous. Society is divided between the ostentatious excesses of the wealthy and the crimes of the poor. Even Louise's hairstyle is an icon of the period.

Lulu is both a femme fatale and a victim, and Brooks plays that ambiguity like a virtuoso. In London she meets Jack the Ripper and the whole bundle suddenly feels like fan fiction! Though this episode allows Pabst to adopt some welcome expressionism. He even seems to sanctify her! But Brooks legendary performance always transcends these moments of phoney melodramatics.

a startling insight into the underbelly of the1920s - Pandora's Box review by tm

this surprisingly modern film is a direct and frank study of the flip side of the emancipated woman of the 20's. It sheds light on the price women paid for social and sexual freedom, and reveals the Weimar Republic (which in turn brought about the birth of the Nazi party) as a festering sewer for the blatant abuse of wealth and power.

there is at the centre of this film, a hypnotic performance by Louise Brooks, who is alluring, tender, witty and callous. a complex character realised by an extraordinary actor.

a dark film worth watching and another landmark of the silent era..

by the way, what is a menorah doing in one of the early scenes: is it a subtle anti-Semitic product placement?

Lulu’s Gravity, Pabst’s Judgement - Pandora's Box review by griggs

It’s a strange, joyless film about people trudging towards misery — spiked with queer charge and Weimar ugliness. The first hour really moves. Then it slackens, and the ending offers a moral lesson it keeps hammering until the credits cut it off. It also carries some ugly baggage: Jewish-coded caricature and an antisemitic undertow that lands with a thud now.

Louise Brooks is the whole show. She’s magnetic, modern, and miles ahead of the film — the kind of presence that makes everyone else feel stuck in the past. Lulu isn’t a “villian” so much as a gravity well: people project their needs onto her.then blame her when their lives top. Pabst shoots with a cool eye and a knack for staging bodies — grand interiors, looming doorways, rooms that feel like traps dressed up as parties.

When it turns tragic, it hits. Some images stick: decadence with real menace as if the walls are watching. Countess Geschwitz is the clearest queer presence — devoted, romantic, frames with real longing — and she brings the film to life even when the story turns judgemental. It’s not bad at all. It just feels likes a highlights reel stapled to a slow, stern lecture.