Ava Gardner played Pandora in Albert Lewin’s 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman is a romantic fantasy film directed by Albert Lewin. Gardner plays Pandora Reynolds, an American woman living in Spain who becomes involved with the mysterious Hendrik van der Zee, played by James Mason. The film combines the Pandora name with the separate legend of the Flying Dutchman.
It is not a straightforward retelling of Hesiod’s account. Instead, the film uses mythic names and legendary motifs within a modern romantic narrative. Its visual style, Spanish locations, and themes of doomed love distinguish it from the 1929 German film Pandora’s Box.
Ava Gardner was one of Hollywood’s major stars during the 1940s and 1950s. Her role in this film is sometimes confused with Louise Brooks’s Lulu in Pabst’s 1929 film, but the two productions are separated by more than two decades and tell very different stories.