In the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, Frank Wedekind created the Lulu character adapted for the movie.
Wedekind was a German playwright whose two Lulu dramas, Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, provided the principal literary source for Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film. The plays depict Lulu as a powerful and controversial figure whose relationships expose hypocrisy, sexual double standards, and social control.
Pabst’s film does not simply reproduce one play. It combines material from both dramas and reshapes it for silent cinema, with Louise Brooks giving Lulu the performance for which the film is best known. The film’s title therefore refers to Wedekind’s play Die Büchse der Pandora as well as to the broader mythic metaphor.
Wedekind is sometimes confused with Bertolt Brecht because both are associated with modern German theater and the early twentieth century. Brecht did not create Lulu. Arthur Schnitzler and Gerhart Hauptmann were also German-language dramatists, but neither wrote the source plays for this film.