The 1929 film Pandora’s Box is primarily based on plays by which writer?

The 1929 film Pandora’s Box is primarily based on plays by Frank Wedekind.

Its main literary sources are Wedekind’s Erdgeist, or Earth Spirit, and Die Büchse der Pandora, or Pandora’s Box. Both works center on Lulu, a charismatic and destructive figure whose relationships drive the drama. The film reshapes this theatrical material for silent cinema rather than retelling Hesiod’s myth directly.

Wedekind was a German playwright whose work often challenged conventional ideas about sexuality, morality, and bourgeois society. Lulu became his best-known creation and was adapted for stage, film, and opera.

The mythological title can cause a common mix-up: the film shares Pandora’s symbolic name with the Greek story, but its immediate source is modern German drama. Director G. W. Pabst and star Louise Brooks are central to the film’s screen history.