Louise Brooks is the last word in amoral cosmopolitan chic as the serial seducer Lulu in GW Pabst’s magnificent tale of lust, greed and violence
GW Pabst’s silent classic Pandora’s Box from 1928 is now on rerelease. It is his Weimar danse macabre, at the centre of which is Lulu, a beautiful woman who is a serial seducer and serial survivor, finally to fall victim to Jack the Ripper in London. This nauseous twist of fate is the final torsion of satire and melodrama for someone who is the plaything of her own fatal glamour.
The movie is based on the two plays by Frank Wedekind – Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box (1905). Louise Brooks plays the showgirl and adventuress Lulu, and her serene yet calculating beauty is framed in a severe black bob, of almost helmet-like shininess and purpose – the very last word in amoral cosmopolitan chic. She is the New Realist flapper of 1930s Germany. That hair is a brilliant signature of her identity. When she escapes the law, it is crucially changed to a more conventional style, combed back from the forehead – as a disguise, of course, and she is indeed almost unrecognisable like that. But when Lulu finally fetches up in London, the hair comes tumbling back down and the bob starts to reassemble itself, though as a dishevelled parody of its former bewitching glory.
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