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

In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, Gustav Diessl portrays Jack the Ripper. The character appears in the film’s final London section, which brings Lulu’s tragic story to its conclusion.

Pabst’s film follows Lulu through a succession of relationships and social settings before she and Alwa reach London. There, Lulu encounters Jack the Ripper, whose violence provides the film’s fatal ending. Diessl’s portrayal is notably brief compared with Louise Brooks’s central performance as Lulu, but it is essential to the narrative’s final turn.

Jack the Ripper was an unidentified murderer associated with killings in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888. The historical figure had already become a powerful subject in popular culture by the time the film was made. The film’s character is a dramatized fictional use of that name, not an identification of the real killer’s historical identity.