Which actor played Countess Geschwitz in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box?

Alice Roberts played Countess Geschwitz in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.

Countess Geschwitz is a lesbian character whose devotion to Lulu becomes one of the film’s important secondary relationships. Roberts’s performance is part of the film’s unusually direct treatment of sexuality and gender for a major European production of the silent era. The character comes from Frank Wedekind’s theatrical material, which provided the basis for the film.

Pandora’s Box was directed by G. W. Pabst and released in 1929. Louise Brooks played Lulu, the film’s central figure, while Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, and Gustav Diessl appeared in other major roles. The ensemble supports the film’s shifting network of desire, power, jealousy, and social judgment.

Countess Geschwitz is sometimes confused with Lulu because both characters are central to the film’s representation of female desire. They are distinct roles: Roberts played the countess, while Brooks played Lulu.