Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, at Film Forum in NYC Feb 14 - Feb 20

In a previous Louise Brooks Society blog post, I noted that the 2009 restoration of Pandora's Box will receive a theatrical release through Janus Films. This release is meant for exhibitors like the Toronto Silent Film Festival - who will be screening the 2009 restoration on April 12 in Canada. See the prior LBS blog for details.

As it turns out, the Janus theatrical release will debut at Film Forum in New York City on February 14. And what's more, the film is set to run an entire week, through February 20. More about this historic event can be found HERE.

Here is some additional information about this week long screening from the Film Forum website.

Germany, 1929
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer
Music by Peer Raben
Approx. 141 min. DCP Restoration.

Sex in the City — Weimar Berlin: in the wake of Louise Brooks’ patent leather-bobbed Lulu, men set up sleek Deco love nests, ruin themselves gambling, and commit both murder and suicide, as she moves from kept woman, showgirl, Lesbian love interest, widow, convicted criminal, fugitive, and possible sex slave; amid a bustling backdrop of life in post-war, pre-Hitler Germany. Pabst’s adaptation of the Wedekind plays plucked Brooks from a waning career as Hollywood flapper to European art film goddess. One of the last masterpieces of the cinema’s most exciting era — with Brooks’ Lulu taking her place as one of the screen’s most enduring creations. Orchestral musical score composed by Peer Raben.

Restored from the best surviving 35mm elements at Haghefilm Conservation under the supervision of the Deutsche Kinemathek, with the cooperation of George Eastman Museum, and the collaboration of the Cinémathèque Française, Cineteca di Bologna, Czech Film Archive, and Gosfilmofond

With support from the R.G. Rifkind Foundation Endowment for Queer Cinema

The Film Forum page also quotes the esteemed film critic David Thomas. It's a rather delicious quote.

“ONE OF THE MOST COMPLETE, ECSTATIC, IMPETUOUS AND RECKLESS PERFORMANCES ANYONE HAD EVER GIVEN ON SCREEN! [Brooks] makes Marlene Dietrich in THE BLUE ANGEL seem coy and calculated… Brooks is a flame fluttering in the wind of her own breath. She is danger as it had not been seen or felt before.”
– David Thomson, Moments That Made the Movies

 

Want to lean more? A big, juicy page about Pandora's Box can be found on the new and improved Louise Brooks Society website. Click on the film title to access the LBS filmography page devoted to the movie. 

 

I would say more, but I need to get back to work on my next book, Lulu in America: the Lost History of Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box. This book, which I hope to have completed later this year, explores the film's rich, textured and improbably undocumented history in the United States, including New York City. The basis for my book is an article, “'Sin Lust Evil' in America: Louise Brooks and the Exhibition History of Pandora’s Box (1929)," which I wrote for Film International last April. Stay tuned to this channel for updates.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.