Louise Brooks played Lulu in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box, directed by G. W. Pabst. Her performance is widely regarded as the central reason the film remains a landmark of silent cinema.
Lulu is adapted from the heroine of Frank Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. She is portrayed as alluring, independent, and destructive to the social worlds around her. Brooks’s restrained expression and distinctive appearance made the role unusually modern for its period.
The film’s reputation grew strongly after later restorations and revivals. Brooks herself had left mainstream Hollywood by the time critics and film societies began reevaluating her work, and the rediscovery of Pandora’s Box helped establish her as a major silent-film icon.
The title can mislead viewers into expecting a direct adaptation of Greek mythology. Pabst’s film uses the Pandora name as a metaphor for unleashed desire and catastrophe, while its plot comes from Wedekind’s drama.