The heroine in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box is Lulu.
Lulu is the central character played by Louise Brooks in G. W. Pabst’s German silent film. She is portrayed as magnetic, rebellious, and socially unconventional, and her relationships with men and women shape the film’s dramatic progression. The story follows the consequences of her choices as she moves through increasingly dangerous circumstances.
Although the film’s title invokes Pandora, Lulu is not a Greek goddess or a direct cinematic version of Hesiod’s Pandora. The character comes from the plays of German dramatist Frank Wedekind, particularly Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Pabst’s film combines material from those works.
Lulu’s name is one of the film’s most useful identifying details because reviews and reference works often discuss the movie as “the Lulu film.” The role helped secure Louise Brooks’s place in film history, especially after later restorations brought the movie to wider audiences.