Frank Wedekind created Lulu, the central character in the stage works behind the film Pandora’s Box.
Wedekind introduced Lulu in the dramas Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. The two plays trace her relationships, sexual power, social position, and eventual downfall. G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film combines material from these works, with Louise Brooks playing Lulu. The film’s title therefore refers to Wedekind’s dramatic world as well as indirectly echoing the ancient Greek myth.
Frank Wedekind was a German playwright whose works often challenged conventional morality and explored censorship, sexuality, and bourgeois society. His Lulu plays were controversial and influential in modern European theatre. Lulu is not Pandora under another name: she is a separate fictional character, created for the stage in the late nineteenth century. Later adaptations, including Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, also derive from Wedekind’s plays.