(German: Die Büchse der Pandora) The title is a reference to
Pandora of Greek mythology, who upon opening a box given to her
by the gods released all evils into the world, leaving only hope
behind. The lead role is played by Lousie Brooks as Lulu. She is
a young and impulsive vaudeville performer whose raw sexuality
and uninhibited nature bring about the downfall of almost
everyone she meets. Indeed her asset is her body which, to use a
metaphor, was like the box. She only needed to open it, and as
we see in this silent film, what havoc it could wreak on men as
well as women of certain attitude. Incidentally in Countess Anna
we have the cinema’s first lesbian character. Pandora’s Box is a
German silent melodrama based loosely on Frank Wedekind’s plays
Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904).
Wedekind’s plays in his time were controversial to say the
least. Satire was a weapon more like a red rag to be shaken at
the middle-class morality and the solid citizenry in Germany
were bedeviled