Pandora’s Box│Eureka Entertainment
Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Many silent films suffered terribly at the hands of censorship, degradation and poor preservation. In fact, no original print or negative survives of G.W. Pabst’s 1929 classic Pandora’s Box and so we owe a lot to Hugh Hefner. It was the Playboy founder who financed the restoration of the film in 2009, as it dealt with the repercussions of sexual repression, a favourite subject of the publisher’s. As the male protagonist of Frank Wedekind’s so-called ‘Lulu’ plays is a publisher who is entranced by a female seductress, one can almost see Hefner in the part. In fact Lulu, who is a goddess of flirtation, is a very modern woman, a flapper of the 1920s, ten years before the outbreak of World War Two. The start of the movie, which is now released for the first time in the UK on Blu-ray, appears to be a very modern film, with its modernistic production design and sexual mores, shot in the hedonistic heart of Berlin. Here, Lulu flirts with a series of older men and one is initially unsure who she is even attached to. The success of the film, and the reason for its durability, is the central performance of the American actress Louise Brooks, who is the motor of the narrative. G.W. Pabst spent months searching for the right actress to play Lulu and after seeing Louise Brooks in Howard Hawks’ A Girl in Every Port, he knew he had found his star. But at the time Louise Brooks was bound to an exclusive contract with Paramount and the studio didn’t even tell her about Pabst’s proposition. It was only after she left the studio (over a salary dispute) that she heard of the offer and, so the story goes, Pabst was in his office with Marlene Dietrich, bent over her contract, that he got a call about Brooks’ availability and immediately dismissed Dietrich, who he considered too old for the part. Brooks was 23, Dietrich was 27.
As usual with these wonderful restorations released by Eureka Entertainment as part of their Masters of Cinema series, there are magnificent extras, including Fiona Watson’s in-depth essay on Louise Brooks, comprising old photographs and video footage. Brooks had a really tragic life, being sexually abused at nine, and then again at 14, before succumbing to alcoholism and seclusion. She was known as the showgirl who read Schopenhauer, while one critic said, “her art is so pure that it becomes invisible.” We also find out that Pandora’s Box, although made in 1929, was the fourth film version of the Wedekind story, and there’s a deliciously insightful audio commentary by the film critic and historian Pamela Hutchinson, whose credits include the book Pandora’s Box. So she knows what she’s talking about. For instance, I was amazed to learn that the actress who played the publisher’s fiancé, Daisy D’ora, was actually fifteen at the time, although she could easily be in her mid-twenties. The other extras on Pandora’s Box include an interview with the restorer Martin Koerber who explains how, with the advances of digital alchemy, he managed to merge three separate copies of the film to obliterate out-of-focus sequences, as well as the usual frame lines, scratches and chemical attacks. Of course, watching the film now in all its pristine glory, you’d never notice. As for the film itself, it is now regarded as one of the classic examples of German Expressionism, based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and its sequel Pandora’s Box which came nine years later. And Pabst, who was an innovator of cinema technique, brings his usual poetic imagery to bear, his extraordinary lighting effects, ingenious framing and truthful performances, often at the expense of his actors’ well-being.
The movie, which Quentin Tarantino rates as one of the ten greatest of all time, also (apparently) features the first lesbian character on film, played by the Belgian actress Alice Roberts. There is a lot of wide-eyed acting, although Louise Brooks herself is quite a natural presence, while the film itself bristles with sexual tension throughout. I should warn potential viewers, though, that besides the plunging necklines, there is an awful lot of smoking – it’s always fascinating to see how representations of the world has changed in 94 years. I hope I’m not giving anything away to say that the story ends in London, which is summed up neatly as a place of fog, Christmas pudding and Jack the Ripper.
Pandora’s Box is now available on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/pandoras-box-limited-edition-box-set-3000-copies/
Eureka Entertainment is the leading independent distributor of classic silent/early films in the UK. In 2004, Eureka! established the award winning Masters of Cinema Series, a specially curated director-led Blu-ray and DVD collection of classic and world cinema using the finest available materials for home viewing. In 2014, Eureka! established Eureka! Classics intended to highlight a broader selection of classic and cult cinema, and in 2017, Eureka! established Montage Pictures, a label celebrating ground-breaking and thought-provoking world cinema from new and upcoming directors.
