Everybody knows that GW Pabst discovered Louise Brooks, a Hollywood silent starlet whose career was going nowhere - despite favour with the public. Rather then submit to humiliating contractual negotiations at Paramount - executives doubted her ability to make the transition to sound - she jumped at Pabst's offer to come to Berlin in 1928 to star in his production of Pandora's Box.
Brooks was indeed pleased to leave the artificial environment of Hollywood and to work with a director who respected actors and acting. In autobiographical writings, Brooks described her reception: 'In Berlin, I stepped onto the station platform to meet Mr Pabst and became an actress… Everywhere, I was treated with a kind of decency and respect unknown to me in Hollywood.'
Perhaps GW Pabst's best-known film, Pandora's Box not only changed the life of Louise Brooks but is considered a cinematic masterpiece. The story of Pandora, the first mortal woman sent to earth to punish Prometheus for stealing fire, first reared its head in the stage works of Swiss-German playwright Frank Wedekind. His scandalous plays Erdgeist (1885) and Pandora's Box (1905) updated her as a seductive she-monster who meets her match in Jack the Ripper. An earlier filming by director Leopold Jessner casting Asta Nelson as Lulu was a more Expressionist take.
Pabst had already directed a stage version of Erdgeist, but when he approached the material with his scenarist Ladislaus Vajda, they went for a more naturalistic treatment that allowed for the more subtle and intimate exposure that the camera brings.
In Pabst's version, much of Lulu's earlier life is not presented, though in versions of the original shooting script there were indications that Pabst had planned to include them. Pabst focuses on the relationship with Dr Schon and merely sketches in her other liaisons. Contemporary critics were not too generous in their reviews, expressing the belief that the story could never be adequately told in a silent motion picture. But, as you will see at today's special closing screening, the film has endured beautifully. Owen Levy
Regie (Dir): Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Buch (Scr): Ladislaus Vajda, nach Frank Wedekinds Erdgeist und Büchse der Pandora
Darsteller (Cast): Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Daisy D'Ora
Länge (Running time): 131 Minuten
[Home ] [Content ] [The Sponsors ] [The Team ] [Comments ] [Help ]
