In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, director G. W. Pabst was Austrian.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst was born in Raudnitz, then part of Austria-Hungary, in 1885. He became an important Austrian film director whose career included major German-language productions. His direction of Pandora’s Box helped define the film’s psychological intensity and expressive visual style.
Pabst also directed Diary of a Lost Girl, another 1929 film starring Louise Brooks. The two movies are frequently discussed together because they form the best-known part of Brooks’s European film career.
Nationality can be confusing in Pabst’s case because Pandora’s Box is a German production and he worked extensively in Germany. “Austrian” identifies Pabst’s nationality, while “German” describes the film’s principal cultural and production context. He died in Vienna in 1967.