Frank Wedekind wrote the stage play Die Büchse der Pandora, adapted into the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. The play is the second part of Wedekind’s Lulu cycle, following Erdgeist, and both works shaped G. W. Pabst’s cinematic version.
Wedekind’s Lulu is not the ancient Pandora. She is a modern dramatic character whose sexuality, social independence, and destructive relationships expose tensions in bourgeois society. The shared title invokes the myth while transforming its themes for a late nineteenth-century theatrical setting.
The play’s German title literally refers to Pandora’s box. Its adaptation helped transfer Lulu from the stage to the screen, where Louise Brooks made the role internationally famous.
Because the film is frequently discussed as a myth-inspired work, its literary source can be misidentified as Hesiod. Hesiod supplied the ancient myth; Wedekind supplied the modern Lulu drama.