Diagonaldi Very well executed

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Beginthebeguine Even in Louise Brooks own autobiography it is hard to tell where the character of Lulu ends and Miss Brooks begins. The picture of modern femininity in the late 1920s with her "flapper" pageboy haircut and sexuality. She stood against convention and paid the price for her modernity within the Hollywood structure. So, too, Lulu who makes her way through Pandora's Box as a modern woman who uses her sexuality to make a place for herself while ignoring the possible consequences of her actions. Does she care about these consequences--no--Lulu lives for the moment and even when it is time to pay the ripper at the end, she is unaware of the price she must pay. Certainly, as a film, it is the zenith of Pabst's work. Filmed during the end of the German Weimar era it begins to show the fraying of the moral liberality that would lead so many Germans to the acceptance of a Hitler Germany. Nevertheless, it a beautiful film where the image is the storyteller. The soft lighting on Lulu's face so captures the uniqueness of Louise Brooks beauty which is so unmarked by lines that it appears as a caricature rather that a living, breathing person. That is what Lulu is and that is perhaps why Miss Brooks was the perfect casting for this project and why she is so imagined as the character herself. For me, the final scene, as the Salvation Army marches off under the archway is the most spectacular. The lighting detail with rays of light extending from a window contrasted by the perfect amount of fog gives me goose flesh.

ZachFrances1990 No one could create Louise Brooks, just like no one could create Pabst's 'Lulu'. No. Pabst's 'Lulu' had to be real, had to exist, and had to do so naturally; unaware. No. Louise Brooks is not a Pabst invention, and neither is her performance in Pandora's Box. What Pabst did, quite simply, was find his 'Lulu'. The film itself is pure invention, Pabst used psychology as his weapon and his intellect as his charm. He pinned actors against each other, he favored one actor on Monday only to dismiss him by Tuesday. Pabst created the purest form of realism possible. By exposing his actor's insecurities, hiding the plot from them, and initiating mind games with every member of the cast on and off set. Pabst loved chess. His love of chess is evident in Pandora's Box. Pandora's Box is his 'check-mate'. So. No. Pabst did not create Lousie Brooks. Pabst made Lousie Brooks what she is today; an ultimately tragic relic of a bygone age. I cannot believe how astonishingly perfect Pandora's Box was conceived. Pabst is a true nobleman of the cinema for a number of reasons, my confidence will never sway in that regard. Pabst made the perfect film. A rarity, a pleasure, and a true art. His direction, the key to the enigma, only comes out of its perpetual hiding after a few viewings. It is Louise Brooks, and only Louise Brooks, that your eyes and heart feast on during the first time you watch Pandora's Box. Brooks was the most enchanting, dazzling, and transcendental of the silent screen goddesses. In the scene where Shon's is caught making love to her by his fiancé and his son, Brooks delivers the greatest facial expression ever captured on film. An act of dominance and sexual achievement. A grin that is truly timeless, as if she's staring through time and space, testing your wildest urges, daring you to love her, and begging you to beg to forget it. Although Brooks didn't know then, or even cared to know at the time, soon she would have Pabst all figured out. She realized that the greatest performance of her career, and one of the most legendary in all of cinema, was not a performance at all, it wasn't even acting. It was her. It was documentary. I was real. Perhaps the greatest invention belonging to G. W. Pabst was the invention of truth. Things look different when they are being filmed, it is a natural reaction to put on on an act of sort when one knows he or she is being watched. Pabst bypassed that fault in cinematic realism and created reality. Untouched by fabled hands, pure and innocent, L. Brooks. Arguably, Pabst is the only director who has ever accomplished such a remarkable feat.

JoeytheBrit Louise Brooks, eh? What a woman. She illuminates the screen in this lurid cautionary tale about the dangers of having a good time, to the point where any other actor sharing the screen is simply forgotten by the audience. Strange that she ended up working in a department store…This film is typical – albeit a superior example - of silent movie story-telling. The visuals take precedence over the dialogue, meaning frequent long sequences during which director G. W. Pabst carefully builds up the atmosphere or simply invites us to dwell, like the male characters in the film, on Ms. Brooks' luminous beauty. It means many people today will find the slow pace difficult to handle, even though the plot reads like something out of a cheap pulp novel. Here we have murder, avarice, greed, infidelity, slave-trading, serial killers, gambling addiction, incipient alcoholism, unrequited lesbian love and blackmail – a potently torrid mix by anyone's standards, but it all seems a little dull.

Marcin Kukuczka "She carries it like a gift she doesn't think much about, and confronts us as a naughty girl. When you meet someone like this in life, you're attracted, but you know in your gut she'll be nothing but trouble," a famous American film critic, Pauline Kael, said about the main character of this unique, very special film. Today when seeing Pabst's movie, we can add that it may constitute nothing but trouble for those who lost the essence of art and a good judge of our modern perception...Georg Wilhelm Pabst, a stylized and independent director, one of the best ones ever, a master of psycho-sexual dramas, offers us here an unbelievable atmospheric experience. He does this at multiple levels. Although there is a story, a certain prefabricated chain of events, viewers are not limited in their views to concrete framework of action but, thanks to flawless directing style, we, as viewers, are led much deeper, into feelings of characters, into their world on screen. The whole atmospheric feast is possible to achieve in PANDORA'S BOX thanks to the director's unique ability to show life, to depict the various states of mind, the various motives for actions with the climax in the final moments where motives and actions become consequences and where individual principle clashes with the social one. Isn't that the absolute success of cinema? The content, based upon the plays by Wedekind, deserves a certain amount of attention, but, when I was viewing the film, hopefully like many other of its buffs, my principal focus was drawn upon the character of Lulu and the performance by Louise Brooks - one word must be said before further analysis - magical! There has been a widespread opinion that Louise Brooks' (whose Hollywood career ended quite early as a result of her deliberate decisions) performance is one of the most genuine ones ever found on screen. Yet, at the same time, it is a performance affected by certain compromise. Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, a curator of the film collection, said once that "Louise Brooks was way too wild in a business that was way too tame." Fortunately, however, she had one great support - Pabst himself. Under his direction, she is allowed to give the very core of herself and her talent portraying a captivating, funny, delicious, illusive, lustful, sensual, overwhelming and, beside all sympathetic femme fatal. Ms Brooks' scenes with the closeups directed onto her face, for instance near the end at the candle and mistletoe, carry powerful impressions. From the very first scenes, we get to know Lulu as a naughty girl. Yet, we seem to like her due to her distance towards the things and events she experiences. There is a combination of fun and appeal, vamp's eroticism and girl's sweetness, dynamic tension and light atmosphere. For me, the most memorable scenes were the backstage sequence where she is not "going to dance for that woman" Here, let me again quote Ms Kael who referred to these moments memorably. "For sheer erotic dynamism," Kael wrote, those backstage scenes "have never been equaled." Lulu's lover and husband to come, Dr Schon (Fritz Kortner) persuades her to perform...In the aspect of Brooks' performance, there is a certain satisfactory focus on the supporting cast. What viewers get here is the very best merit of a silent production. Eye contact, mimics, imagery, all the cast occur to feel their roles intensely like in those few masterworks of the period. First, a mention must be made of Fritz Kortner who portrays cold, dominant, strong, strict, ambitious, easily offended Dr Schon who appears to be proud and independent yet prone to female weapons... The scene he dies observed 'as if' by us and the leading character is another milestone of the film. Carl Goetz gives a sympathetic performance as Schigolch, perhaps the character we all like. A simple guy who likes Lulu, do does not take any advantage of her, who does not do any serious harm and whose most touching dream is to taste Christmas pudding one more time... Franz Lederer is convincing in the role of Alva, Schon's son, another man who loses under the spell of femme fatal. Consider his moments when he willingly and reasonably wants to leave; yet, something calls him back directly into her arms...what a magical power of these female weapons... An interesting and a very daring character in the film occurs to be Countess Geschwitz - an open indication of a lesbian character. Thanks be to Pabst for the courage to show that! Her dance with Lulu at the wedding and many other scenes are particularly well played and deserve great praise. Daring for the business too tamed... The character who represents a macho, a sort of robot unable to feel much is Rodrigo. His most unforgettable scene is his first scene and a visit he pays to Lulu's - what a try of the trapeze act! What a prospect of muscles! What a naive joy in girl's eyes! PANDORA'S BOX is a movie I consider a must see, an atmospheric masterpiece that makes unforgettable impressions. And the leading character portrayed by Ms Brooks...Wedekind described Lulu as "the personification of a primitive sexuality" but I would not hesitate to say here that Pabst and Brooks changed this 'primitive' into UNIQUE and MASTERFUL. It's a story of desire and struggle, of fun and grief, of lust and disillusion, of anything that comes out of Pandora's Box. 10/10