Pandora’s Box is the 1929 German silent film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and starring Louise Brooks as Lulu.
The film is based primarily on Frank Wedekind’s stage dramas Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Brooks plays Lulu, a charismatic and destructive figure whose relationships drive the story toward tragedy. Although the title invokes the ancient myth, the film is not a literal adaptation of Hesiod’s account and does not center on the Greek character Pandora.
Pandora’s Box was initially controversial and received mixed reactions, but it later became one of the best-known films of the silent era. Louise Brooks’s performance, her bobbed haircut, and the film’s sophisticated visual style helped establish its lasting reputation.
The title can cause confusion because several films and works use Pandora-related names. The 1929 production is specifically the German silent film directed by Pabst. Its subject is Lulu and the social world around her, not a dramatization of the gods creating Pandora.