Pandora’s Box
(Die Büchse der Pandora)
Live Musical Accompaniment
Screening on Film
Screening on Film
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst.
With Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer.
Germany, 1929, 35mm, black & white, silent, 100 min.
German intertitles with English subtitles.
With Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer.
Germany, 1929, 35mm, black & white, silent, 100 min.
German intertitles with English subtitles.
In Pandora's Box, Louise Brooks provides one of the great performances of the silent era as Lulu, the hedonistic but otherwise innocent prostitute who unwittingly brings down all who come into contact with her. Released just as sound films began to flood the market, Pandora's Box had multiple problems with the censors as well: Lulu sleeps with a father and his son, gambles, lies, and befriends cinema's first sympathetic lesbian. Panned and forgotten in its own time, it was rediscovered in the 1950s when numerous film historians agreed that Pandora's Box was a masterpiece and Brooks, a minor star best known for her black helmet haircut, a major talent.