Die Büchse der Pandora (1929)
English: Pandora's Box
Directed by: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Starring: Louise Brooks, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz
Length: 133 min
Genre: Crime Drama
Nation: Germany
Based on the plays "Erdgeist" and "Die Büchse der Pandora" by Frank Wedekind
I tried searching to see if this was one of the first times Jack The Ripper makes an appearance in pop culture, but I couldn't find it.
Disaster seems to follow Lulu (Louise Brooks) around wherever she goes. Her sexuality brings out lust and animal like behavior by men. She marries a wealthy man, but he becomes insane and she accidentally shoots him. She is convicted of manslaughter, but with the help of her "pimp" and her dead husband's son, Alwa (Francis Ledere), who is in love with Lulu, she escapes.
They hide for awhile on an illegal gambling ship, but after she is nearly sold by the ship's owner to a wealthy Egyptian to help pay off the gambling debt that Alwa had built up. The three once again are able to flee, this time to London.
In London, Lulu meets her ultimate fate when, working as a prostitute, she crosses paths with Jack The Ripper.
I was pretty underwhelmed by the film based on all of the praise it gets. It was good, but not great. The actors played their roles well enough, but the story just seemed forced.
One piece of trivia is that while on the gambling ship, a woman named Countess Anna Geschwitz takes a liking to Lulu. It's thought that this is the first lesbian character in movie history. The movie was banned in several nations, including Germany from 1933-1945 (during the Thrid Reich). In France, the film the was heavily edited - they removed the Jack The Ripper scene, had her found not guilty at her trial, made the Countess her childhood friend and in the end, Lulu joins the Salvation Army.....I wonder if I can find that version to see just how butchered it was.
My Rating: 6/10
IMDB: 8/10 (3,042 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (21/23 Fresh - 8.5/10 Rating)