Which author wrote the plays that inspired the 1929 film Pandora’s Box?

Frank Wedekind wrote the plays that inspired the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film draws on Wedekind’s two Lulu dramas, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. The plays portray Lulu as a disruptive and sexually independent figure whose relationships expose the hypocrisy and instability of her society. Pabst adapted this material into a silent film centered on Louise Brooks’s performance.

Wedekind wrote Earth Spirit in 1895 and Pandora’s Box in 1904. The two works are often discussed together as the Lulu plays. Their themes and provocative stage history made them influential sources for later theater, opera, and cinema.

The film title can cause confusion because Pandora’s Box is also the title of Wedekind’s second Lulu play. The 1929 movie is not a direct retelling of Hesiod’s Greek myth. Instead, it borrows the Pandora name as an image for destructive consequences and adapts a modern European dramatic cycle.