Lulu is the name commonly given to the central woman in Frank Wedekind’s plays that inspired the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.
G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box is a German silent film starring Louise Brooks as Lulu, a charismatic and destructive figure. The film draws mainly on Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, which together form the dramatic source for Lulu’s story.
Wedekind’s Lulu is not simply a direct modern version of the ancient Greek Pandora. The connection is thematic: both figures became associated with desire, danger, and consequences. Pabst’s film transforms those ideas into an expressionist-era crime and melodrama centered on Lulu’s relationships.
The title can therefore cause confusion. The 1929 movie uses the Pandora image as a cultural metaphor, but its protagonist is Lulu, not the goddess-created woman of Hesiod’s myth. Louise Brooks’s performance later became the film’s most celebrated feature.