Which playwright wrote the dramas that inspired G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film Pandora’s Box?

Frank Wedekind wrote the dramas that inspired G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film Pandora’s Box. The film draws mainly on Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, which center on the character Lulu.

Wedekind’s Lulu cycle explores sexuality, social hypocrisy, power, and the destructive consequences of desire. Pabst condensed and reshaped this theatrical material for cinema, using Louise Brooks’s performance to create a visually distinctive silent-film version.

The title Die Büchse der Pandora is the German form of “Pandora’s Box,” but Wedekind’s work is not a direct dramatization of Hesiod. Its relationship to the ancient myth is an adaptation of the metaphor and name rather than a retelling of gods, Titans, and the jar.

This distinction explains why film references to Pandora’s Box often involve both classical mythology and modern European theater.