Which 1929 film adaptation of Pandora’s Box stars Louise Brooks as Lulu?

Pandora’s Box is the 1929 film adaptation starring Louise Brooks as Lulu.

Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the German silent film adapts Frank Wedekind’s two Lulu plays and follows Lulu through a series of relationships, scandals, escapes, and disasters. Louise Brooks’s performance is central to the film’s enduring reputation.

The movie is not a direct dramatization of Hesiod’s Greek myth. Its title comes from Wedekind’s 1904 play Die Büchse der Pandora, which forms the second part of the Lulu cycle. The film uses the title to evoke the destructive fascination surrounding its heroine.

Because several works share the title Pandora’s Box, it is useful to identify the year, director, or star. The 1929 film is the best-known screen version and is frequently discussed in histories of silent cinema and Weimar-era German film.