Frank Wedekind created Lulu, the central character in the plays adapted into the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. Wedekind was a German playwright whose Lulu drama is divided mainly between Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.
The plays present Lulu as a complex figure whose relationships expose the sexual double standards and social tensions of fin-de-siècle Europe. Her story is deliberately provocative, and its mixture of satire, melodrama, and tragedy made it influential in modern theatre.
G. W. Pabst’s film uses material from both plays and places Louise Brooks in the title role. The movie’s Pandora reference therefore comes through Wedekind’s literary work rather than from a direct scene-by-scene adaptation of Hesiod. The ancient myth supplies a symbolic framework for danger, desire, and irreversible consequences.
Wedekind is sometimes confused with later German-language dramatists such as Bertolt Brecht or Arthur Schnitzler, but those writers did not create Lulu. Wedekind’s work also inspired later stage and operatic adaptations, including Alban Berg’s opera Lulu.