Film

Pandora's Box

Name: Pandora's Box
Genre: Drama, Crime, Romance
Released: 1929
Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz, Krafft-Raschig

Other titles called Pandora's Box: the 1992 series (BBC Two).

Drama
Very dark

Pandora's Box is silent cinema at its most electric: G.W. Pabst's fever dream of appetite and consequence, anchored by Louise Brooks' Lulu, a performance so alive it barely reads as 1929. It's gorgeous, cruel, and startlingly candid about sex and class. Watch it for a face doing all the acting title cards can't, in a Weimar Berlin that already feels like it's collapsing.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love silent cinema's sensual, expressionist strangeness and don't mind a heroine who is more force of nature than moral center, so the film's glamour and moral chill can land together.

Skip it if you need characters to be sympathetic or a story that moves briskly; at 141 minutes, its episodic drift and theatrical melodrama can feel like a long wait for the next jolt.

What it asks of you: Patience with a silent film's pacing and intertitles, plus a willingness to watch scenes unfold in long, deliberate frames rather than quick cuts, across a full feature-length runtime.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Blue Angel1930

Marlene Dietrich's Lola Lola is Lulu's spiritual sister, another woman whose casual sensuality wrecks a respectable man, but here sound and Sternberg's cabaret glamour replace Pabst's silence and shadow.

But The pacing is stately and the tragedy more one-note; if you loved Lulu's ambiguity, this reads as more straightforwardly moralistic.

Sunset Boulevard1950

A film about the wreckage silent cinema leaves behind, told by a woman consumed by the image she once was. Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond feels like Lulu's ghost, decades on, still performing.

But It's a talkie satire of Hollywood specifically, so the connection is thematic rather than stylistic - no Weimar atmosphere here.

Baby Face1933

Pre-Code Hollywood at its most unashamed: Barbara Stanwyck claws her way up by using men exactly as they mean to use her, with the same amoral clarity Lulu has about her own charm.

But It's brisker and glossier than Pandora's Box, a studio product built for a punchline ending rather than tragedy.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Pandora's Box

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Gone Girl2014

Both films are about a woman turned into a screen for male fantasy and punishment; Gone Girl simply flips who controls the projection.

Rosamund Pike's Amy Dunne is Lulu's mirror image: a woman who becomes the story everyone else tells about her, except this time she's holding the pen instead of drowning in the narrative.

But It's a slick modern thriller built for shock twists, nothing like Pabst's slow, tragic unspooling.

Breathless1960

Godard's jump-cut romance carries the same reckless, appetite-first heroine energy, a couple sleepwalking toward ruin because charm and impulse feel like reason enough to live.

But It's cool where Pandora's Box runs hot-blooded; if you want operatic doom rather than shrugging detachment, this might underwhelm.

Belle de Jour1967

Buñuel's chilly, surreal study of a woman's secret desires refuses to explain or condemn her, much as Pabst refuses to fully condemn Lulu - both let female want sit unresolved.

But The surrealism distances you emotionally; this is a puzzle box more than a tragedy, so don't expect catharsis.

Gilda1946

Rita Hayworth's nightclub singer is a noir descendant of Lulu, magnetism turned into a weapon nobody - including her - fully controls, set inside the same triangle of desire and jealousy.

But Noir plot machinery takes over in the back half, trading psychological nuance for genre payoff.

Klute1971

Jane Fonda's sex worker is written with the same unsentimental clarity Pabst brings to Lulu - someone surviving inside other people's fantasies of her without ever fully becoming one.

But It's a slow-burn thriller with a detective plot bolted on, which dilutes some of the pure character focus of Pandora's Box.

Nights of Cabiria1957

Fellini's naive, endlessly hopeful streetwalker shares Lulu's fatal mix of innocence and vulnerability to the world's worst men, though this one insists on tenderness where Pabst insists on doom.

But It's warmer and more sentimental than Pandora's Box; if you want icy detachment, this may feel too soft-hearted.

Jules and Jim1962

Truffaut's free-spirited Catherine detonates two men's friendship simply by being irresistible and ungovernable, echoing Lulu's gift for chaos she never quite means to cause.

But The tone stays playful and nostalgic for most of the runtime, so the darkness arrives late and unevenly.

Babylon Berlin2017

Same city, same year, same sense that pleasure and catastrophe are about to collide - a whole series built from the world Pandora's Box glimpses in passing.

The same decadent, doomed Weimar Berlin Pabst filmed in real time, rebuilt decades later as a sprawling, gorgeous crime series full of jazz clubs, political rot and moral free-fall.

But It's sixteen-plus hours across multiple seasons, a very different commitment than a two-hour silent film, and the plotting is dense.

Basic Instinct1992

Both put a magnetic, unreadable woman at the centre of male obsession and violence - one does it as art, the other as pulp, same wiring at different voltage.

The trashy, glossy, unapologetically horny descendant of Lulu - a woman whose sexuality is both weapon and mystery, with every man around her a willing casualty.

But It has none of Pabst's tragic weight or ambiguity; this plays the same dynamic for pure erotic-thriller spectacle.