Pandora's Box (1929)
Average Rating: 8.6/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.3/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 4,748
My Rating
Movie Info
German filmmaker G.W. Pabst's late-silent classic Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) stars the hauntingly beautiful Louise Brooks as libertine dancer Lulu. Ever out for the "main chance," Lulu persuades her wealthy lover Dr. Schön (Fritz Kortner) to marry her. But in a fit of jealous rage, he pulls a gun, a scuffle ensues, and she shoots him. Eventually escaping to London with the doctor's moonstruck son Alwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu takes up residence with her "adopted" father Schigolch
Dec 1, 1929 Limited
Nov 28, 2006
Moviegraphs Inc.
Cast
-
Louise Brooks
Lulu -
Fritz Kortner
Dr. Peter Schon -
Francis Lederer
Alwa Schoen -
Alice Roberts
Countess Anna Geschwitz -
Gustav Diessl
Jack the Ripper -
Michael von Newlinsky
Marquis Casti-Piani -
Daisy D'Ora
Charlotte M.A. von Zani... -
Sig Arno
Instructor -
Carl Götz
Schigolch (Papa Bromnie... -
Krafft Raschig
Rodrigo Quasi -
-
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All Critics (30) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (3) | DVD (11)
Louise Brooks, especially imported for the title role, does not pan out, due to no fault of hers. She is quite unsuited to the vamp type which was called for by the play from which the picture was made.
Top CriticOne of the classic films of the German silent era.
Brooks overwhelms the lens with her magnetic eyes.
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.
The movie remains one of the most insightful depictions of the elemental incongruity between man's nature and woman's.
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.
The movie's horrifying and beautiful conclusion becomes more poignant and powerful with each passing year.
There is so much of modern movie life here that the picture, like Brooks' beauty, defies the ravages of time.
If ever an actor was born to be seen in black-and-white it was Louise Brooks, who is as luminous as ever in this new restoration of GW Pabst's silent nightmare-melodrama.
The film...is more interested in the waywardness of almost everyone's longings and in their failures of self-preservation than it is about Lulu's particular immorality or recklessness.
"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.
Criterion's superb two-disc DVD is a veritable 'the Essential Louise Brooks' compendium. With it we get not only Pandora's Box restored to Criterion's exacting standards, but also choice extras including an interview with Brooks.
Bold for its time, this restored, uncut version is a touch slow at some points, but its star glows throughout.
Pabst was a psychologically astute filmmaker, but it's the shockingly sensual, charismatic Brooks that makes the picture.
Brooks offers a brilliantly guileless performance.
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June 15, 2006:
Critical Consensus: Soggy "Nacho," Aimless "Drift," Untidy "House"This week at the movies, we've got wrestlers ("Nacho Libre"), Tokyo drifters ("The...
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Foreign Titles
- Die Büchse der Pandora (DE)
- Pandora's Box (Die Buchse der Pandora) (CA)
