Pandora’s Box is the 1929 film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and based on Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays.
The German silent film follows Lulu, played by Louise Brooks, whose relationships and social position draw her into escalating personal and legal danger. Its source material consists chiefly of Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, written around the turn of the twentieth century.
The movie is often discussed as a major work of Weimar-era German cinema. Its visual style and Brooks’s performance helped it gain lasting importance after its original release. The film’s title invokes the Greek myth of Pandora, but its plot is a dramatic adaptation about a fictional modern woman rather than a literal presentation of the ancient story.
Some viewers confuse this film with later movies also titled Pandora’s Box. The 1929 version is specifically the black-and-white silent film associated with Pabst and Brooks. Its German title is Die Büchse der Pandora.