In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, which character does actor Gustav Diessl play?

In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, Gustav Diessl plays Jack the Ripper. Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s German silent film follows Lulu, portrayed by Louise Brooks, whose relationships and public scandal lead to a tragic final encounter in London.

Diessl’s character appears near the end of the film and is identified as Jack the Ripper, the notorious but largely unidentified Victorian-era murderer. The film uses the historical name as a dramatic figure rather than presenting a documentary account of the real crimes.

Pandora’s Box was adapted from two plays by German playwright Frank Wedekind: Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Louise Brooks’s performance later became the film’s defining feature, while the film itself is regarded as a major work of Weimar-era German cinema. Its title refers to Lulu’s destructive allure, not to a literal mythological container.