Who directed the 1929 silent film Pandora’s Box, starring Louise Brooks as Lulu?

Georg Wilhelm Pabst directed the 1929 silent film Pandora’s Box, starring Louise Brooks as Lulu.

The German production was based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora. Pabst shaped the material into a film about desire, scandal, social judgment, and the destructive consequences of Lulu’s relationships. Its title connects it with the Pandora tradition, although the story is not a direct retelling of Hesiod’s Greek myth.

Pabst was a leading Austrian filmmaker associated with the New Objectivity movement in German cinema. Pandora’s Box is especially noted for its visual control, psychological tension, and Brooks’s performance, which became central to the film’s later reputation.

The director is sometimes confused with other major German-language filmmakers of the silent period, including F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Neither directed Pandora’s Box; Pabst is the credited director.