Alain Cavalier directed the 1962 French film Le Combat dans l’île, also released in English as The Pandora Case.
The film is a political thriller about a violent far-right organization and the people drawn into its conspiratorial world. Its English title, The Pandora Case, uses the familiar idea of a sealed danger being opened and released, while the original French title translates approximately as “The Combat on the Island.”
Cavalier wrote and directed the film early in his career. The cast includes Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Henri Serre. Its political atmosphere reflects tensions surrounding France’s colonial conflicts and the violence of extremist movements in the early 1960s.
The title is sometimes confused with films that directly adapt the Greek myth or with the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. The connection here is chiefly metaphorical: Pandora’s name signals hidden danger and consequences rather than a mythological plot.