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Silent 101Film 19 of 20
Pandora's Box
Die Büchse der Pandora
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G.W. Pabst, Nero-Film, 1929, from Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays. Louise Brooks is Lulu: a variety star, a kept woman, a wife, then a woman on the run. Pabst brought her from Hollywood after seeing A Girl in Every Port. She does not signal vice or innocence. She looks at people as if they were already decided. The last city is London. What happens there is the play's ending, and it is the point.
In three programmes
The camera is a person who has already decided. Brooks does not perform Lulu's vice or her innocence; she looks at people, and the film follows what her looking does to them. Watch her at the wedding. Watch the last night in London. Pabst never tells you what to think and never needs to.
Lulu does not scheme. The damage happens around her, and Brooks plays it as a woman looking at people who have already decided. A revue, a wedding, a courtroom, a ship, London. Watch who pays. Everyone, in order.
Lulu. She does not signal vice. She looks at people as if they had already decided, and the film follows the damage. Pabst brought her from Hollywood for this and it made the rest look like assignments. A revue, a wedding, a trial, a ship, London in the fog.
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