The central character in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box is Lulu. Louise Brooks plays Lulu in Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s German silent film, which adapts Frank Wedekind’s plays.
Lulu is portrayed as an alluring, socially disruptive figure whose relationships with wealthy and powerful people lead the story toward tragedy. The film’s title comes from Wedekind’s stage material, especially the play Pandora’s Box, rather than from a direct adaptation of the ancient Greek myth.
This distinction matters because the mythological Pandora and Wedekind’s Lulu serve different purposes. Pandora is a figure in a creation-and-punishment story, while Lulu is a modern dramatic character shaped by early twentieth-century theater, cinema, sexuality, class, and social control.