Frank Wedekind’s play Pandora’s Box, alongside Earth Spirit, provided source material for the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film draws on two plays by German writer Frank Wedekind: Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Both works focus on Lulu, a controversial and destructive figure whose relationships expose tensions involving sexuality, class, power, and social respectability. The film reshapes the stage material into a unified cinematic narrative.
The title can cause confusion because it refers simultaneously to Wedekind’s play, Pabst’s film, and the ancient Greek expression. Wedekind’s Lulu cycle is not a literal adaptation of Hesiod’s myth. Instead, the title works as an allusion to consequences unleashed by desire and social transgression.
Spring Awakening is another famous Wedekind play, but it is not the second source text for Pabst’s film. In English, its title is also sometimes translated as The Awakening of Spring, making it an especially plausible distractor. The relevant companion play is Pandora’s Box itself.