What is the name of Ava Gardner’s character in the 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman?

Ava Gardner played Pandora Reynolds in the 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. The character is an American woman living on the Spanish coast whose life becomes entwined with Hendrik van der Zee, a mysterious sailor linked to the Flying Dutchman legend.

Albert Lewin wrote and directed the film, which combines romantic drama, mythic elements, and supernatural tragedy. James Mason plays van der Zee. Although the title evokes the ancient Greek Pandora, the film’s plot is primarily built around the European legend of the Flying Dutchman, a condemned mariner unable to reach shore.

Pandora Reynolds is therefore not the woman from Hesiod’s Greek myth, and she is not Lulu from the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. The shared name connects the film to ideas of fatal curiosity and doomed love, but the narrative, setting, and characters are different.