SOURCE: Elsaesser, Thomas. “Lulu and the Meter Man: Louise Brooks, Pabst, and ‘Pandora's Box’.” Screen 24, no. 4 (July 1983): 4-36.

In the following essay, Elsaesser explores Weimar culture's response to Pandora's Box and to the American actress Louise Brooks starring in the film.

I

For several decades, G. W. Pabst's film, Die Büchse der Pandora/Pandora's Box (1928-29) was practically unavailable, except as one of the very special treasures of Henri Langlois' Cinemathèque in Paris. The star of the film, Louise Brooks, an actress from Wichita, Kansas, was to have one of the most enigmatic careers in film history. After the release of the two films she made with Pabst (the other one is Tagebuch einer Verlorenen/The Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929) she became a Paris cult figure in 1930, but on returning to Hollywood she virtually ceased appearing in films, and literally became a ‘lost one’. Langlois'...