The 1929 film Pandora’s Box adapts plays written by which German dramatist?

The 1929 film Pandora’s Box adapts plays written by German dramatist Frank Wedekind.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film draws on Wedekind’s dramas Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Both plays feature Lulu, a provocative and destructive figure whose relationships expose the double standards of the society around her. Louise Brooks played Lulu in the film adaptation.

Wedekind wrote the Lulu plays in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were controversial because of their frank treatment of sexuality, exploitation, respectability, and gendered power. The film reshaped the theatrical material for silent cinema while retaining Lulu’s central role.

The connection to the ancient Pandora myth is thematic rather than plot-based. Wedekind’s title suggests a woman viewed by others as a source of danger, but the film’s narrative is not about Zeus, Epimetheus, or a jar containing supernatural evils. This is why the film should be distinguished from direct myth retellings.