Die Büchse der Pandora

One of TCM's spotlights this month is on interesting hair in the movies, or as they call it, the Hollywood Hair Hall of Fame. It'll be on every Monday night in June, starting tonight at 8:00 with Pandora's Box.

Louise Brooks plays Lulu, a former dancer who at the start of the movie is now the kept lover of newspaper publisher Dr. Schön (Fritz Kortner) in a fashionable apartment in Berlin. One day after Schön heads off to work, another man shows up, Schigolch (Carl Goetz), who is presumably a former lover, but one who could never give her the comforts that Schön can. When Schön finds Schigolch in the apartment, she points out that he used to be her "patron".

Meanwhile, it seems almost every man wants Lulu romantically, with the exception of Schön's adult son Alwa (Franz Lederer, who was born in Bohemia with the name František and would later flee Germany for Hollywood, taking the name Francis and appearing in a bunch of films, most notably Confessions of a Nazi Spy), a composer. Although he doesn't seem to want love from her, he's writing material that would be perfect for her to go back to the stage.

Eventually, she takes him and a promoter Schigolch introduces her to up on that offer. But she's also driven to it by the fact that Dr. Schön has decided to turn her out and marry a respectable woman of his class -- he could never marry her because everybody's been talking about their relationship.

Lulu gets pissed off when she meets Schön's fiancée at the theater where she's performing, and refuses to go on, eventually using her feminine ways to get Dr. Schön to agree to marry her! But on their wedding night he realizes (or thinks he does) what sort of woman he's married, and tries to force Lulu to commit suicide. In the struggle, Lulu winds up shooting Schön to death. If only there were witnesses she could get off on a self-defense argument, but there aren't, so the court sentences her to five years in prison.

She still has a bunch of people lusting after her, and when the verdict is handed down, they decide to set off the fire alarm, giving her a chance to escape! Unfortunately, she's going to be found out in Germany, so she, Alwa, and Schigolch have to flee the country, eventually winding up in London and a much crappier existence than Lulu ever had as a kept woman.

Pandora's Box is an interesting movie, with a lot of wonderful cinematography courtesy of director G. W. Pabst. It's a silent, coming at the very end of the silent era after Hollywood had nearly completed its conversion to sound film, so that meant the audiences weren't as big as the German filmmakers had hoped. This also led to Brooks eventually growing tired of the movie business and retiring fairly young. It's a bit of a shame, since she gives quite a good performance.

The one problem I had with the movie, however, is that I felt it slowed down quite a bit in the second half. I also had a problem with the idea that they were going to be completely unable to find work in London. Surely a performer like Lulu at least could have gotten work as a chorus girl. But then that wouldn't fit in with the story, I suppose. Even with the movie having problems, it's still well worth watching for the visuals.

Pandora's Box got a DVD release courtesy of the Criterion Collection many years ago, but that release seems to be out of print, so you're going to have to catch the rare TCM showing.