PWNYCNY This is a great movie, not only as an example of cinematic expressionism but as a story. The movie is well-acted, movies along at a brisk pace, has a well-organized story, and has a female lead who is pretty and endearing. She can't help being who she is, and if she gets into trouble it's really not her fault. Louise Brooks is beautiful as the lovely lady Lulu, who is everyone's friend. Of course men are going to love her because she is so lovable. And the rest of the cast is wonderful too. The movie touches on all kinds of themes that would ring true for a contemporary audience, including marital fidelity, jealousy, bisexuality, domestic violence, and class conflict, and does this all within the framework of a coherent story. Although this is a silent movie, it still manages to keep the audience's attention. This movie is proof that a compelling story can be told without sound, and that silent movies, as a genre, are worthy of respect.

ZachFrances1990 No one could create Louise Brooks, just like no one could create Pabst's 'Lulu'. No. Pabst's 'Lulu' had to be real, had to exist, and had to do so naturally; unaware. No. Louise Brooks is not a Pabst invention, and neither is her performance in Pandora's Box. What Pabst did, quite simply, was find his 'Lulu'. The film itself is pure invention, Pabst used psychology as his weapon and his intellect as his charm. He pinned actors against each other, he favored one actor on Monday only to dismiss him by Tuesday. Pabst created the purest form of realism possible. By exposing his actor's insecurities, hiding the plot from them, and initiating mind games with every member of the cast on and off set. Pabst loved chess. His love of chess is evident in Pandora's Box. Pandora's Box is his 'check-mate'. So. No. Pabst did not create Lousie Brooks. Pabst made Lousie Brooks what she is today; an ultimately tragic relic of a bygone age. I cannot believe how astonishingly perfect Pandora's Box was conceived. Pabst is a true nobleman of the cinema for a number of reasons, my confidence will never sway in that regard. Pabst made the perfect film. A rarity, a pleasure, and a true art. His direction, the key to the enigma, only comes out of its perpetual hiding after a few viewings. It is Louise Brooks, and only Louise Brooks, that your eyes and heart feast on during the first time you watch Pandora's Box. Brooks was the most enchanting, dazzling, and transcendental of the silent screen goddesses. In the scene where Shon's is caught making love to her by his fiancé and his son, Brooks delivers the greatest facial expression ever captured on film. An act of dominance and sexual achievement. A grin that is truly timeless, as if she's staring through time and space, testing your wildest urges, daring you to love her, and begging you to beg to forget it. Although Brooks didn't know then, or even cared to know at the time, soon she would have Pabst all figured out. She realized that the greatest performance of her career, and one of the most legendary in all of cinema, was not a performance at all, it wasn't even acting. It was her. It was documentary. I was real. Perhaps the greatest invention belonging to G. W. Pabst was the invention of truth. Things look different when they are being filmed, it is a natural reaction to put on on an act of sort when one knows he or she is being watched. Pabst bypassed that fault in cinematic realism and created reality. Untouched by fabled hands, pure and innocent, L. Brooks. Arguably, Pabst is the only director who has ever accomplished such a remarkable feat.

chaos-rampant Lulu is a social butterfly out for a good time, a femme who is fatale but only because the men lust after her so fiercely.Normally in film noir the femme fatale appears to us not so much a human being but an agent, a catalyst of some dangerous illusion. She is the wet dream from the private dick's perspective, desire personified. Hollywood probably took this up from Dietrich's persona in another German film, Blue Angel from the following year, the heartless diva who presents herself in a way that will satisfy her capricious whims.This is different though, and it is more stunning for this, the trick being that we see the world from the eyes of an innocent woman as she becomes shaped into a femme fatale. She is forced into the role and eventually plays it to perfection. The very fact that she is beautiful and sexy turns her into that prize that men would do anything to have. Film noir as we came to know it was about all these desperate efforts.It is still however film noir in the most incisive, essential way. Dual worlds linked by the turning of karmic wheels; from inside a cheerful, innocent woman who we know to be basically good and trying to live life, but who at the same time appears provocative, alluring, exuding sex, and therefore by her very nature, by the fact that she is the person she was born to be, seems to lull men into the kind of stupor where they can dream only her, a dream so intoxicating that in turn traps her in her image. The result is that she inhabits a different world than she weaves around her and, almost without exception, it's the jerk from one world to the other that yields the anxieties - from the private to the public, where a person is no longer himself but only the sum total of other peoples' views, and so an object of collective scrutiny or, as in our case, sexual paroxysm.So from her end life as a series of spontaneous, often inexplicable 'nows' but which we understand to be structured around her and unwittingly powered by herself. But from the other end life organized, and from their own ends again seemingly spontaneous, with the sole intent of having her. Men suddenly crave her - they don't know why, she doesn't - and will do anything, but who she also provokes without realizing, by simply being herself.This dual perspective that reverberates across the film, as much about the woman herself as both temptress and angelic swan, she can fit in both these roles as well as she actively pursues them, as about the swarm of men who surround her, at first pretending moral uprightness but finally more or less powerless before her charms, is ingeniously rendered in two scenes in particular.The first is set at the courthouse where she's at trial for murder; upon being pronounced guilty, her admirers quickly stage a commotion by setting off a fire alarm that allows them to extricate her. From the outside a chance emergency, the crowd dashing, clamoring, pushing for the exit, and from her end as well, unwitting, dumbfounded, in the middle of all this crowd being carried outside, but which we know was all orchestrated by the men who'd like to have her. Of course the fire alarm is about the fires of desire.The other is at a bar or gambling house where she has fled and is hiding for safety. A reward out on her name, various parties conspire to exploit the situation for a quick dime. Here, it is she who is spinning the most dazzling web of deceit - now improvising the role of the femme fatale on the spot, but out of pressing need. The most revealing game concocted by her: she petitions a man to gamble for her fortunes on a card table. He is winning, but of course is revealed that he was cheating all along.It ends with all these lives finally released from the grip of the karmic energies that have clasped them so tightly, the self- instructed destinies, each according to his own decree. The man who wishes he could eat Christmas pudding one more time gets to.Pabst orchestrates the finale as a dance of symbolic gestures; the most symbolic perhaps being that the woman had a heart of gold all along. We may had our doubts because she mingled with money, but now we know. The man doesn't to the end, this is the saddest destiny here. Of course at the cost of ever having her.

Marcin Kukuczka "She carries it like a gift she doesn't think much about, and confronts us as a naughty girl. When you meet someone like this in life, you're attracted, but you know in your gut she'll be nothing but trouble," a famous American film critic, Pauline Kael, said about the main character of this unique, very special film. Today when seeing Pabst's movie, we can add that it may constitute nothing but trouble for those who lost the essence of art and a good judge of our modern perception...Georg Wilhelm Pabst, a stylized and independent director, one of the best ones ever, a master of psycho-sexual dramas, offers us here an unbelievable atmospheric experience. He does this at multiple levels. Although there is a story, a certain prefabricated chain of events, viewers are not limited in their views to concrete framework of action but, thanks to flawless directing style, we, as viewers, are led much deeper, into feelings of characters, into their world on screen. The whole atmospheric feast is possible to achieve in PANDORA'S BOX thanks to the director's unique ability to show life, to depict the various states of mind, the various motives for actions with the climax in the final moments where motives and actions become consequences and where individual principle clashes with the social one. Isn't that the absolute success of cinema? The content, based upon the plays by Wedekind, deserves a certain amount of attention, but, when I was viewing the film, hopefully like many other of its buffs, my principal focus was drawn upon the character of Lulu and the performance by Louise Brooks - one word must be said before further analysis - magical! There has been a widespread opinion that Louise Brooks' (whose Hollywood career ended quite early as a result of her deliberate decisions) performance is one of the most genuine ones ever found on screen. Yet, at the same time, it is a performance affected by certain compromise. Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, a curator of the film collection, said once that "Louise Brooks was way too wild in a business that was way too tame." Fortunately, however, she had one great support - Pabst himself. Under his direction, she is allowed to give the very core of herself and her talent portraying a captivating, funny, delicious, illusive, lustful, sensual, overwhelming and, beside all sympathetic femme fatal. Ms Brooks' scenes with the closeups directed onto her face, for instance near the end at the candle and mistletoe, carry powerful impressions. From the very first scenes, we get to know Lulu as a naughty girl. Yet, we seem to like her due to her distance towards the things and events she experiences. There is a combination of fun and appeal, vamp's eroticism and girl's sweetness, dynamic tension and light atmosphere. For me, the most memorable scenes were the backstage sequence where she is not "going to dance for that woman" Here, let me again quote Ms Kael who referred to these moments memorably. "For sheer erotic dynamism," Kael wrote, those backstage scenes "have never been equaled." Lulu's lover and husband to come, Dr Schon (Fritz Kortner) persuades her to perform...In the aspect of Brooks' performance, there is a certain satisfactory focus on the supporting cast. What viewers get here is the very best merit of a silent production. Eye contact, mimics, imagery, all the cast occur to feel their roles intensely like in those few masterworks of the period. First, a mention must be made of Fritz Kortner who portrays cold, dominant, strong, strict, ambitious, easily offended Dr Schon who appears to be proud and independent yet prone to female weapons... The scene he dies observed 'as if' by us and the leading character is another milestone of the film. Carl Goetz gives a sympathetic performance as Schigolch, perhaps the character we all like. A simple guy who likes Lulu, do does not take any advantage of her, who does not do any serious harm and whose most touching dream is to taste Christmas pudding one more time... Franz Lederer is convincing in the role of Alva, Schon's son, another man who loses under the spell of femme fatal. Consider his moments when he willingly and reasonably wants to leave; yet, something calls him back directly into her arms...what a magical power of these female weapons... An interesting and a very daring character in the film occurs to be Countess Geschwitz - an open indication of a lesbian character. Thanks be to Pabst for the courage to show that! Her dance with Lulu at the wedding and many other scenes are particularly well played and deserve great praise. Daring for the business too tamed... The character who represents a macho, a sort of robot unable to feel much is Rodrigo. His most unforgettable scene is his first scene and a visit he pays to Lulu's - what a try of the trapeze act! What a prospect of muscles! What a naive joy in girl's eyes! PANDORA'S BOX is a movie I consider a must see, an atmospheric masterpiece that makes unforgettable impressions. And the leading character portrayed by Ms Brooks...Wedekind described Lulu as "the personification of a primitive sexuality" but I would not hesitate to say here that Pabst and Brooks changed this 'primitive' into UNIQUE and MASTERFUL. It's a story of desire and struggle, of fun and grief, of lust and disillusion, of anything that comes out of Pandora's Box. 10/10