Frank Wedekind created the Lulu plays that inspired the story of the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. The German playwright developed Lulu as the central figure of Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, two dramas later adapted for the screen.
Wedekind’s Lulu is a magnetic and controversial character whose relationships expose hypocrisy, desire, class power, and social judgment. Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film retained the character and much of the dramatic framework while reshaping the material for silent cinema. Louise Brooks’s performance made the screen version especially famous.
The title Pandora’s Box comes from Wedekind’s second Lulu play, not from a direct cinematic adaptation of Hesiod’s Works and Days. The ancient myth supplied a suggestive association with danger released into the world, while Wedekind’s plays supplied the modern plot and character.
Wedekind’s work is sometimes grouped with German modernist drama, but he was not Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Schnitzler, or Thomas Mann. Those writers were important German-language authors, yet none created the Lulu cycle used by Pabst.