Is G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box a Feminist or Misogynist Work?
Note: This is the hundred-and-fifty-fifth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my fifth favorite 1929 film, PANDORA’S BOX, directed by G.W. Pabst.
Louise Brooks and G.W. Pabst’s two collaborations together, PANDORA’S BOX and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, have been embraced and reviled in (semi-)equal measure by conservative and progressive voices alike in the 90 or so years since their release. The latter I’ve already written about, considering it as the superior of the two adaptations of controversial source materials the German director Pabst made with American actress Brooks in 1929. But PANDORA’S BOX was made first, in the same mold as DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, but with a Brooksian character more predator than victim. Her Lulu, a fitting echo of Brooks’ own name because the character came to define her personal life, navigates a labyrinth of exploitative men just like Thymian (of DIARY OF A LOST GIRL). While Thymian did in fact have more agency than is perhaps asserted by critics, Lulu and PANDORA’S BOX call more starkly into question the nature of feminism, especially as it pertained to the end of the Roaring ’20s.
But PANDORA’S BOX is based on a play much older than that; in fact, it’s a composite of two plays often performed together. Frank Wedekind’s ERDGEIST (1895) and DIE BÜCHSE DER PANDORA (1904) formed the basis for Pabst and co-writer Ladislaus Vajda’s script. But as with DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, Pabst majorly overhauled key plot points and characters, angering another section of viewers. In any event, he kept the core of Wedekind’s plays: Lulu is a woman who uses her sexuality to get what she wants, the antithesis of Thymian, whose sexuality (excessively projected onto her by men) continued to pile misfortune upon her life. Lulu’s sexuality does end up putting her through a degradation of fortune as well, putting her in a position where “she is about to receive the gift that has been her dream since childhood,” as Brooks put it. “Death by a sexual maniac.”
When I said PANDORA’S BOX was reviled in “(semi-)equal measure,” I really should have clarified that it was met with, at best, confusion upon its release in 1929, and general box office mediocrity. In the decades since, with the critical reevaluation of both Pabst and Brooks, it has been hailed as one of the great silent films. But even still, discussion is had about the commentary on Lulu’s actions. Does PANDORA’S BOX celebrate female sexuality as an agent of individuality in a man’s world? Or does it condemn and demonize women’s seductive abilities, to the point that a pure practitioner gets her comeuppance at the hand of a man’s (phallic) knife? The truth lies more with the former, but the brilliance of Pabst and Brooks is their lack of concern with straight answers.
Pabst was a proponent of “New Objectivity” at this time, and that probably accounts for PANDORA’S BOX feeling less like a polemic and more of a meditation on the state of femininity. Even still, this “objectivity,” personified by Brooks’ simple and reined-in acting style, runs all the way through “vérité” filmmaking into poetic Impressionism. In this mode, critical consensus that Pabst vigorously made “message films” cheapens the human experience he documented. PANDORA’S BOX, to answer the question posed by myself, does not celebrate female sexuality, but it also doesn’t condemn it. The film illustrates Lulu’s aggressive seduction as a function of a patriarchal society, an attempt to forge a path into relative luxury. If her sexuality is an impediment to lasting happiness and the precipitation of tragedy, it is less because of her actions and more that it is the way the “game” is played. At the start of the film, Lulu is a “kept” woman, kept by a relatively wealthy newspaper editor. By the end, she’s taking a john to her spartan room on Christmas Eve. Her first choice just happens to be Jack the Ripper, and the murder scene that ensues is radically tender. It’s easy to see why Brooks thought it was what Lulu always wanted.
But neither does PANDORA’S BOX entirely free Lulu from consequence. Her freewheeling, apparently uncaring attitude results in the continuous thinning of her “herd,” as it were. As the film goes on, her companions drop off from her influence, whether from death or other unfortunate circumstances. By the end, only Lulu’s original patron and the son of her former “master,” the newspaper editor murdered by Lulu (in self-defense, perhaps?), are left. They are, literally, left out in the cold by Lulu’s death. But of course, why was the need for prostitution handed off to her? Why can’t these able-bodied men find work themselves?
PANDORA’S BOX is not feminist in the way we understand it today. It does not proclaim Lulu’s advantageous exploitation of a rich man as (positively) empowering nor her turn to sex work as a viable means of support. And it is not misogynistic; Pabst does not turn a blind eye to the realities of male treatment of women and he doesn’t see Lulu’s actions as existing in a vacuum of “fallen women” tropes. So to cop out and never answer the question in my own headline, PANDORA’S BOX exists outside the realm of direct and easy classification. This isn’t to make the film, and Pabst, apolitical, far from it. If anything, I think the influence of a male gaze and genuinely radical ideas, even coming from a man, on the instantly iconic and ethereal Brooks sets PANDORA’S BOX in a world apart. Lulu is unconcerned with your assertions. That a woman who moves through the world primarily on a sexual basis feels such a way is itself a huge political statement, if not a neat one.
