Pandora's Box ( Die Büchse der Pandora )

Pandora's Box (DVD) (*)

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Original Title: Die Büchse der Pandora
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Australia ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
131 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Cast/Crew Interview(s)
Documentary
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Uncut
Black & White

Movie filmed in 1929 and produced in:
Germany ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Written By:
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Joseph Fleisler

Actors:
Alice Roberts ..... Countess Anna Geschwitz
Carl Goetz ..... Schigolch
Francis Lederer ..... Alwa Schön (as Franz Lederer)
Fritz Kortner ..... Dr. Peter Schön
Gustav Diessl ..... Jack the Ripper (as Gustav Diesel)
Krafft-Raschig ..... Rodrigo Quast (as Carl Raschig)
Louise Brooks ..... Lulu

Synopsis:

Pandora's Box, the silent classic that caused a scandal on its 1929 release, stars Louise Brooks in the most memorable role of her career. Lulu is a high class prostitute whose incredible beauty and passion for life leaves a trail of broken admirers in her wake. She effortlessly gets what she wants as she discards one lover for the next but events soon begin to spiral out of her control. Beyond the iconic black bob and porcelain skin, Louise Brooks radiated sexuality with an unparalleled subtlety of expression and gesture. In Pandora's Box, she gives her most captivating and erotically charged performance and displays a smouldering screen presence that has never been equaled.

German filmmaker G.W . Pabst's late-silent classic Pandora's Box (Die Busch de Pandora) stars the hauntingly beautiful Louise Brooks as libertine dancer Lulu. Ever out for the Main Chance, Lulu tries to persuade her wealthy lover Dr. Schon (Fritz Kortner) to marry her. When he refuses, she shoots him. Escaping to London with the doctor's moonstruck son Alwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu takes up residence with her bisexual 'adopted' father (Carl Gotz). Soon Lulu's selfish behavior alienates everyone, and she is reduced to walking the streets, with tragic consequences. Based on two works by the controversial German novelist. Even after seven decades, Pandora's Box exudes smoky sensuality in every frame. Regarded now as a masterpiece, the film received surprisingly scathing reviews, with most of the critical broadsides aimed at Louise Brooks (this was long before Brooks graduated from just another pretty Hollywood starlet to Cult Goddess).

In Weimar Germany, Lulu is an entrancing and beautiful free-spirited girl who lives on the beneficences of the men who fall under her powerful yet somehow innocent spell. Her current paramour is the highly-respectable Dr. Schön, but even his handsome son Alwa cannot resist the draw which Lulu exerts. Dr. Schön comes to believe he must marry Lulu, even though he has been engaged to a proper young woman of his own class, when his affair with Lulu becomes public. At their marriage celebration, Schön becomes jealously enraged by her behavior, and tragedy ensues. Although Lulu appears to escape the fate that this tragedy would suggest, her unwitting power over men leads her, and several of the men, in a seemingly inescapable spiral downwards toward destitution and further tragedy.

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 15 November, 2005.

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