Today,
Pandora's Box is considered a classic, a masterpiece
of the silent era and a landmark work in the history of world cinema.
Its reputation is due largely to the riveting, red hot performance given
by its star, Louise Brooks, in the role of Lulu.
Few can match
Brooks' intensity and erotic allure. Pauline Kael called her Lulu "The
archetype of the voracious destructive women." Brooks is that, and more.
In fact, she's stunning--and those who see the film for the first time
often say they can't take their eyes off the actress.
Pandora's Box and its star, however, have not always enjoyed
the reputation they do today. When the film first showed in New
York--back in December of 1929--it received mostly negative reviews.
Just about everyone, including its star, thought it stunk.
On March 19th, New Yorkers will have a chance to judge for themselves when Film Forum screens a 35mm print of
Pandora's Box as part of "
It Girls, Flappers, Jazz Babies & Vamps." The series showcases some of the silver screen's provocative early sex symbols.
Pandora's Box,
a German-made film directed by the highly regarded G.W. Pabst,
premiered in Berlin in February of 1929; reviews were mixed, even
dismissive. Some months later, when
Pandora's Box opened at a
single theater, the 55th Street Playhouse in New York, American
newspaper and magazine critics were similarly ambivalent, and sometimes
hostile.
Photoplay, one of the leading fan magazines of
the time, wrote "When the censors got through with this German-made
picture featuring Louise Brooks, there was little left but a faint,
musty odor."
Billboard had a similar take, "This feature spent
several weeks in the censor board's cutting room: and the result of its
stay is a badly contorted drama that from beginning to end reeks with
sex and vice that have been so crudely handled as not even to be spicily
entertaining. Louise Brooks and Fritz Kortner are starred, with Miss
Brooks supposed to be a vampire who causes the ruin of everyone she
meets. How anyone could fall for la belle Brooks with the clothes she
wears in this vehicle is beyond imagination."
The
New York Times
went further, "Miss Brooks is attractive and she moves her head and
eyes at the proper moment, but whether she is endeavoring to express
joy, woe, anger or satisfaction it is often difficult to decide." The
critic for the
New York World echoed the
Times, "It
does occur to me that Miss Brooks, while one of the handsomest of all
the screen girls I have seen, is still one of the most eloquently
terrible actresses who ever looked a camera in the eye."
The critics, it seemed, were ganging up. The
New Yorker dismissed the film. As did the
New York Post, who described it as "a rather dull underworld offering which makes very little sense."
Film Daily thought the film "too sophisticated for any but art theater audiences." And the
New York Herald Tribune said "Louise Brooks acts vivaciously but with a seeming blindness as to what it is all about."
Variety
put the nail in the coffin when its opined "Better for Louise Brooks
had she contented exhibiting that supple form in two-reel comedies or
Paramount features.
Pandora's Box, a rambling thing that doesn't help her, nevertheless proves that Miss Brooks is not a dramatic lead."
Despite such poor reviews, the film managed to draw an audience, albeit a modest art-house crowd. After the
New York Sun reported
Pandora's Box "has smashed the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse's box office records," the film was held over for another two weeks.
With its New York run ended,
Pandora's Box fell into an
obscurity from which it would take decades to overcome. By then, sound
had come in and poorly reviewed silent films from abroad were little in
demand. Though exhibition records are fragmentary, the film was seldom
if ever shown in the United States.
In fact, in the decades that
followed, only one other screening is known to have taken place--in 1931
in New Jersey at a second-run house not above showing sensational or
exploitative fare. Newspaper ads for the Little Theater in Newark warned
"Adults Only," and
Pandora's Box, synchronized with
"thrilling" sound effects and English titles, was promoted as "The
German sensation that actually reveals most of the evils of the world"
offering "Raw reality! A bitter exposé of things you know but never
discuss."
With its reputation in ruins, the film was little seen
and little regarded, even by film curators. In 1943, Iris Barry, head of
the Museum of Modern Art's film department, met with Brooks, who was
then living in New York. Barry's opinion carried considerable weight
(and did so for decades to come) in the film world; she told Brooks the
museum would not acquire a copy of
Pandora's Box for its collection, because "it had no lasting value."
Times change, and so do reputations. In the mid-1950s,
Pandora's Box
was rediscovered by a handful of European archivists and historians.
Their enthusiasm would cross the Atlantic, and in the United States, the
film was almost single-handedly championed by James Card, the founding
film curator at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester. Year by year,
screening by screening, a new and positive critical consensus grew
around the once much maligned film.
Cut to 2006, the year which
marked the Brooks' centenary. New York's Film Forum marked the occasion
by screening a 35mm print of the film; remarkably, during its short run,
Pandora's Box was reported to be the second highest grossing independent film in the United States.
In his acclaimed 1989 biography of Brooks, Barry Paris wrote: "A case can be made that
Pandora's Box was the last of the silent films--not literally, but aesthetically. On the threshold of its premature death, the medium in
Pandora achieved near perfection in form and content."
It's that "near perfection"--dark and riveting, that draws audiences time and again.
Pandora's Box
will be shown at Film Forum in New York (209 West Houston St. west of
6th Ave.) on Saturday, March 19 at 7:20 p.m. Steve Sterneron will
accompany the film on piano.