Frank Wedekind created Lulu, the character featured in the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.
Wedekind was a German playwright whose two Lulu dramas, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, provided the source material for G. W. Pabst’s film. The character is portrayed as alluring, independent, and socially disruptive, while the surrounding story examines desire, power, morality, and punishment.
Wedekind’s Lulu plays were written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pandora’s Box was first published in 1904, while Earth Spirit dates from 1895. Together, they form the dramatic basis for the Lulu cycle.
The film’s title can cause confusion with the ancient Greek myth of Pandora. Pabst’s movie does not adapt Hesiod’s story about the woman and the jar; it adapts Wedekind’s modern stage works and uses their title and central character.