Pandora's Box (1928)
Runtime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Theatrical Release: Jun 16, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: This classic silent German film tells of Lulu, a sensual chorus girl whose uncontainable sexual power literally destroys every man with whom she has an affair, until she encounters one of history's most notorious killers - Jack the Ripper. Considered particularly shocking at the time of its... This classic silent German film tells of Lulu, a sensual chorus girl whose uncontainable sexual power literally destroys every man with whom she has an affair, until she encounters one of history's most notorious killers - Jack the Ripper. Considered particularly shocking at the time of its release because of the suggestion of a lesbian attraction between Lulu and a Countess. Brooks is at her sultry finest. [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner
DVD Info
Release:
Nov 21, 2006
DVD Features:
- Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
- Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 - German
- Subtitles - English - Optional
Additional Release Material:
- Audio Commentary - Thomas Elsaesser; Mary Ann Doane
- Featurettes - 1. "Louise Brooks: Looking For Lulu" (1998)
- 2. "Lulu In Berlin" (1971)
- Interview - 1. Louise Brooks - Star (1971)
- 2. Richard Leacock
Additional Product:
- Books - Essays Collection
- 3. Michael Pabst
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
"Pandora's Box" is a German silent film that Paris Hilton could relate to. She wouldn't like the way it ends, though.
Give all due credit to Pabst, but Brooks pretty much single-handedly raises Pandora's Box above being just another doomed-bad-girl melodrama.... She makes Lulu unfathomable, a well that always has more to give. Therefore, so is the film.
Bold for its time, this restored, uncut version is a touch slow at some points, but its star glows throughout.
If you've never seen Brooks -- or Pandora's Box -- you've missed one of the most extraordinary personalities and films of the silent movie era.
Pabst was a psychologically astute filmmaker, but it's the shockingly sensual, charismatic Brooks that makes the picture.
The movie remains one of the most insightful depictions of the elemental incongruity between man's nature and woman's.
More than a little overbaked and frequently veering from the artistic to the artsy. But Louise Brooks is, herself, every inch a classic.
2006 is the centennial of actress Louise Brooks, and to honor it, her greatest film, Pandora's Box, is being released in a new 35-mm print in New York's Film Forum before being taken around the country.
Neither an exposé of social conditions nor a psychological case study and certainly not a moral parable G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box is a tour de force of cinematic eroticism.
This is a stirring vision of the world gripped by a sinister moral vice--a nosedive into a carnal abyss of despair lined with visionary chiaroscuro sights and thorny mythological references.
One of the great films about the mysterious allure of the female form and the destructive power of the male gaze that's inflicted upon it.
Miss Brooks is attractive and she moves her head and eyes at the proper moment, but whether she is endeavoring to express joy, woe, anger or satisfaction it is often difficult to decide.
It's a stunning film, no question, with sexuality that is quite frank for its day, effective atmosphere and, of course, Brooks' stunning performance.
It would be impossible to name all the artists who have been touched by Pandora's Box, but novelist Vladimir Nabokov, filmmakers Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Quentin Tarantino, and pop singers Madonna and Siouxsie Sioux are but an obvious few.
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