In association with

Pandora's Box [1929]
from Second Sight Films Ltd.
starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz, Krafft-Raschig
directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Features:

• Black & White
• Dubbed
• PAL
• Silent

Editorial Review:

G W Pabst's 1928 silent masterpiece Pandora's Box stars the luminous and highly photogenic Louise Brooks. She plays the irresistible Lulu, a cabaret star who entices, captivates and eventually destroys all men who cross her path. Her beauty and her fetching charm draw an assortment of repressed and lonely people; Schigolch, a boozy old man who pretends he's her father; Geschwitz, a countess who has also fallen for Lulu, and Schoen, a rich tycoon who carries on an affair with Lulu even though he's to be married. His short solution is to put Lulu in his son Alwa's vaudeville show. As Alwa, too, becomes trapped in Lulu's charms, Schoen's fiancée catches Lulu and Schoen in a backstage embrace. Lulu quickly takes her place as Schoen's bride, only to drive Schoen to suicide during their wedding party. Put on trial for murder, Lulu almost gets out of it by simply batting her eyes at the prosecutor. Still, she is found guilty and Alwa, who has grown increasingly obsessed, causes a distraction to allow Lulu's escape from the courthouse. Alwa, Lulu and Schoen become desperate fugitives, eventually ending up in London where Lulu finally meets her match: Jack the Ripper. Pandora's Box offers pure cinematic delights--Pabst's luscious photography, the tense drama of its story line and, most impressively and importantly, Louise Brooks, who gives a performance that is certainly one of the best in the history of cinema. --Shannon Gee

Made at the very end of the silent era, Pandora's Box is one of the last flowerings of German cinema's greatest decade. It also marked the highpoint of two careers: Austrian director GW Pabst and American actress Louise Brooks. A merge of two linked plays by the decadent German playwright Frank Wedekind, it's the story of Lulu, the archetypal femme fatale (the same plays served as source for Alban Berg's masterly 1935 opera). At once sensual and innocent, a force of uninhibited sexuality, Lulu brings ruin on all her lovers both male and female, and ultimately upon herself.

Hollywood never knew what to do with Brooks who, with her fierce intelligence and her open delight in sex, refused to play the coy flappers then in fashion. In Pabst, whose genius, she wrote, "lay in getting to the heart of a person", she found the director she needed, and he brought out her a screen persona with a depth of eroticism that's still breathtaking to see. The film features some of the finest German acting talent of the period--Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer--but it's Brooks' luminous performance that rivets the eye and makes her a great screen icon.

Though the action is nominally set in the late-19th century--Lulu ends up in a shadowy London where she encounters Jack the Ripper--Pandora's Box breathes the gamey air of the Weimar Republic, vividly captured by Günther Krampf's pungent photography. This release runs well over two hours and includes, for the first time in decades, over 30 minutes of cut footage, restoring the film to something very close to Pabst's original masterpiece.

On the DVD: Pandora's Box on DVD is a clean, crisp transfer in the classic 4:3 ratio, and the mono soundtrack brings out all the detail of Peer Rubens' Kurt Weill-inflected score, stylishly performed by the Kontraste Ensemble. Dialogue intertitles can be read in either English or German. We also get an outstanding 60-minute documentary, Looking for Lulu, about Brooks' life and career: warmly narrated by Shirley MacLaine, it features excerpts from an interview with Brooks from 1976. --Philip Kemp

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0

• Box of Delights
  This is a movie I've wanted to see for a long time. Yet was always put off when confronted with various edited versions previously available. One of which infamously lasted only 55 minutes! This is the full restored version brought together by Second Sight. And it certainly is worth the wait. Th central character of Lulu is played by Louise Brooks, in her most famous role, as a carefree promiscuous naive waif. She is adored by men, and in a groundbreaking role, by women. In this case played by the reclusive... more info

• Pandora's Box Film Score(s)
  The 2006 DVD version with the four different types of film scores make this 1929 film a uniquely different viewing experience. The contemporary score actually makes the movie appear ultra modern. It was very clever of Criterion to include four different types of music to accompany this film as opposed to the standard piano score which makes most silent films appear predictable and antique. Lulu too appears ultra modern and Pabst's selection of an American (flapper) actress to star in a German expressionist... more info

• The Highwater Mark Of German Silent Cinema.
  That is not my personal opinion but is the general consensus regarding this groundbreaking adult film which made a screen icon out of Louise Brooks and assured G.W. Pabst his place in cinema history. The movie is based on two plays by controversial German playwright Frank Wedekind (EARTH SPIRIT and PANDORA'S BOX) who wrote them with the deliberate intent of shocking his middle class audience by talking bluntly about sex and violence and this was in 1904. Composer Alban Berg would use them as the source... more info

• One helluva of a film, but Louise Brooks is something else
  This is the only silent film I have seen (I have difficulty with them) that fits the medium so perfectly, spoken dialogue seems completely unnecessary. The fact that Wedekind’s “Lulu” is part of our literary and dramatic heritage, the fact we all know her from the plays, from Alban Berg’s opera and the film “The Blue Angel” undoubtedly helps.

  Overwhelmingly however, it is the truly astounding and magnetic portrayal by Louise Brooks of this most fatale of femme fatales. In the midst of... more info

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