Synopsis
Dr. Schoen, owner of a large newspaper, has fallen under the spell of the beautiful florist Lulu. Not concerned with what others may think, he marries Lulu. Shortly thereafter, Lulu can no longer stand him, shoots him and is prosecuted. She then flees to Paris with Schoen's son Alwa and another friend. But soon Lulu falls into the hands of a blackmailer and Alwa becomes a cardsharp. Once again, Lulu has to escape, this time her goal is London, where she finally meets her fate...
(www.german-cinema.de)

"Louise Brooks, a great--almost impersonal--beauty who set styles in the flapper period, and whose straight hair and bangs were imitated all over the world (and were used as the model for the Dixie Dugan comic strip), left Hollywood in 1928 at the height of her career and went to Germany for the role of a lifetime. G.W. Pabst had selected her to play Lulu in this film, adapted from the Wedekind plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora (the same source material that Alban Berg used for his opera Lulu). Pabst, one of the giants of the screen, is perhaps most famous for his treatment of sex, violence, and abnormal psychology, and Wedekind's sex tragedy provided startling material.

Lulu is the sexually insatiable female, the archetype of voracious, destructive woman. She has no moral sense and no interests beyond sensuality; when a man is exhausted, she leaves him. The film is episodic; it's in an Expressionist style, with rapid cutting and surprising kinds of almost violent visual tension, particularly in the first half. For sheer erotic dynamism, the backstage scenes on the opening night of a show Lulu is in have never been equalled; the later scenes, in Marseilles, are comparatively drab. Moving through the chiaroscuro, Louise Brooks, with her straight back and strong shoulders, seems to have her own form of sexuality--preconscious yet intuitively all-knowing. She's like a cool, beautiful, innocently deadly cat that people can't keep their hands off.

With Fritz Kortner as Dr. Schön, Francis Lederer as his son, Alice Roberts as the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, and Gustav Diessl as Jack the Ripper. Adaptation by Ladislaus Vajda. The German censors made extensive cuts in the film (Brooks indicated that they cut about 15 minutes); a reconstituted version was assembled a half-century later. (The Wedekind material was first filmed in 1919 with Asta Nielsen; the most recent version was probably the 1962 LULU with Nadja Tiller.)

(Pauline Kael, © 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved.)

For extensive information on Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box go to The Louise Brooks Society's excellent website at www.pandorasbox.com.