Masters of cinema… Pandora’s Box (1929), Eureka Blu-ray Box Set

Brooks reminds me of the scene in “Citizen Kane” where Everett Sloane, as Kane’s aging business manager, recalls a girl in a white dress whom he saw in his youth when he was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry. They never met or spoke. “I only saw her for one second,” he says, “and she didn’t see me at all—but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

Kenneth Tynan, The Girl in the Black Helmet, New Yorker 1979

 

I hired Louise Brooks because she's very sure of herself, she's very analytical, she's very feminine - but she's damn good and sure she's going to do what she wants to do. I could use her today.  She was way ahead of her time.  And she's a rebel. I like her, you know. I like rebels. I like people you can look at and you remember who they are.

Howard Hawks, 1967

 

It doesn’t really matter whether this is one of the greatest films of the silent era, how great the uncanny Louise Brooks is in it or what number it is in the hot 100 Sight and Sound Poll, Pandora’s Box is the main reason I started to take an interest in the old medium after buying a DVD in a second-hand shop in Bristol’s Park Street one lunchtime in 2003. Amazingly, that has been the only version of the film available on home media in the UK over all this time even though the film was restored a number of years back in the US.

 

It’s fair to say that this 1080 HD presentation from the definitive 2k restoration has been a long time coming and it is the archive release of 2023 as proved by Silent London’s Poll for the year and the sheer impact it has made to my Brooks’ shelf – the sexiest boxset of the year, superb art, matt laminate and just a transcendent artefact! I keep on glancing over at it to make sure that it does exist… dreams do come true but do they always remain so?

 

Louise Brooks

I can fawn all day over this but objectively speaking, this is exactly what this film, GW Pabst and Louise Brooks deserve. The film has never looked better on digital media and this is also the longest print available – longer than my old DVD and most copies I’ve seen projected. It’s not much longer but there are a number of restored title cards that flesh out the anxious closing scenes and which suggest different possibilities.

 

Pamela Hutchinson’s commentary builds on her successful BFI book on the film and she provides superbly detailed context and explanation of the performers and the film. She highlights the circularities of the film, how it begins during Hannukah and ends at Christmas, the similarities in Lulu’s posing with her father/pimp and her killer, Jack, even the transactional relationship between the young woman and her metre man at the start and her father… money changing hands based on services supplied.

 

Hutchinson provides some shocking details of Frank Wedekind’s sexual mores and his relationships with under-age sex workers and his plays were an extension of his sexuality, here certainly in the free spirit – Earth Spirit was the first Lulu play, followed by Pandora’s Box both intended to show a society founded on greed and desire. Frank’s agenda was there from his first major play, Spring Awakening (1891) – also made into a film in 1924 and 1929 directed by Richard Oswald and staring Ita Rina… surely an Earth Spirit/Lulu in an alternate Pabst timeline - which featured, deep breath… masturbation, homoeroticism, suicide, as well as abortion and so naturally caused a scandal and, naturally, founded the writer’s reputation.

 

Pamela’s deep dives during the commentary are worth the price of admission alone. In his study Dr Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner) has just had a confrontation with Lulu and his son Alwa (Francis Lederer) which, of course he loses as Lulu-Louise arches her back, cocks her head and huffs away after staring him out yet again. He’s outgunned and, oddly, asks Alwa to pass him the K volume of their encyclopaedia. Pamela intuits that he’s looking for the definition of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, a German phrase dating from the late Nineteenth Century describing a woman’s role as children, kitchen, church. Boy, have you picked the wrong girl Ludwig…

 

Louise is so natural as Lulu… and it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role – even Ita Rina, let alone Brigitte Helm Pabst’s original choice and as fate would have it he saw Brooks in Howard Hawkes’ A Girl in Every Port (1928). He made numerous offers to Paramount but it was only after Brooks fell out with the CEO B. P. Schulberg, who was trying to strong arm her on terms for the new talkies, and threatened to walk when he mentioned the chance to work in Germany. No idea who Pabst was and speaking no German, Brooksie was more than happy to be anywhere but here and left. It was an extraordinary confluence of circumstance especially given how things turned out, admittedly over time, as film historian Imogen Sara Smith says in her booklet essay:

 

Later in life, (Brooks) expressed amazement at how Pabst could have somehow sensed that she was Lulu – at least, his version of Lulu. This perfect fusion of actor and role set off a cinematic supernova, but an oddly delayed one: a time bomb with a fuse of more than twenty years.

 

As Hawks realised, Brooks was something new, something futuristic - a time-traveller he could well recognise four decades later; independent, intelligent, a person of agency even if she didn’t always know where she would end up. Far more than Henri Langlois’ Face of the Century but an embodiment of something far deeper. She’s herself but she’s also her character, her self-depreciation doesn’t get over the fact that she could act and in these perfect circumstances of Pabst, Berlin and Pandora she was magnificent.

But maybe I should mention more about the first of those elements. Pabst directs so well here and the film is technically so strong with editing and atmosphere that make the most of ever player. Günther Krampf’s cinematography picks out points of light in such a controlled way, he enables Pabst’s mood and psychological objectives to radiate from the screen in ways that epitomise the state of the silent art close to the turning point of the talkies. Krampf worked with pretty much everyone and has been described as the "phantom of film history" by historians Bergfelder and Cargnelli*. Art direction from Andrej Andrejew and Gottlieb Hesch provides the context – in the German way – for Pabst’s emotional narrative with huge dark spaces mixed with striking intimate corners that trap and release the players’ expressiveness.

 

Pabst takes the play – which I’ve only seen once, with Joanne Whalley at the Almeida Theatre, a version called Lulu directed by Ian McDiarmid – in different and more political directions. Obviously he’s able to produce a more psychological take through film, so much pleasing technique capturing thought and action, but he’s also making Lulu more of a victim of capitalism than her own “nature”. As ground-breaking lesbian love interest Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) says to the prosecutor at Lulu’s trial, “… do you know what would become of your wife had she spent the nights of her childhood in cafes and cabarets?”

 

The film is packed with such meaning and here I’m barely scratching the surface but for me, Pabst gives Lulu’s life and death more weight than was originally designed. Luckily you can still get the Limited-Edition boxset on the Eureka site with plentiful guides and extras to help you navigate the sense and circumstance but, I would act quickly as just 3000 are available!

These very special features include:

• Hardbound case featuring artwork by Tony Stella
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration
• Optional English subtitles
• Orchestral Score by Peer Raben
• New audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson
• New visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger
• New video essay by David Cairns
• New video essay by Fiona Watson
• Plus: A 60-page booklet featuring new writing on the film by critics:
•                 Alexandra Heller Nicholas,
•                 Imogen Sara Smith, and
•                 Richard Combs
•                 Archival stills and imagery

 

It’s the most stunning release and what this film deserves. As one of the most re-watchable films in history, this is your destiny.

 

When Siouxsie and the Banshees released their long-awaited debut album in 1978, John Peel famously played the whole thing and then announced “that’s the one boys and girls, that’s the one…” And so it is that this aged post-punk can tell you all what you know already that this new Eureka release is indeed The One, boys, girls and everybody with an interest on this planet and beyond.

 

* In Destination London: German-speaking emigrés and British cinema, 1925-1950 (2008), Berghahn Books

 

Gimme shelter... Zuflucht (Refuge) (1928), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival

So many vanished back then, never to be seen again…

 

This restoration was one of the highlights of the recent Bonn Festival and whilst it’s a relatively simple tale told very well it’s a reflection of its time in terms of polished late silent technique and the central premise of class loyalties disrupted during the Weimar years ten years after the uproar of war and revolution.

 

Whereas so many German films of this period we shot in studio, Refuge features a host of location shots of Berlin as director Carl Froelich exhibits the realist, "New Objectivity" style, a reaction against the expressionism practiced on the silent stage. It also features perhaps the most popular film star of this period, Henny Porten – star of The Ancient Law, Merchant of Venice (1923), and Lubitsch’s Anna Boleyn (1920) - providing an opportunity to see just why she commanded the affections of so many. This was also a co-production of the actress with Froelich; she chose the role and it shows.

 

This was the World premier of the new digitization from Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and it looked fantastic even on our screens hundreds of miles away from the festival with the experience being enlivened by accompaniment on piano and violin from the maestro Günter A. Buchwald!

Francis Lederer, he lived long and prospered

We start with passengers unloading from a train repatriating German combatants from the German Revolution of 1918-19 which saw many communist sympathisers flee into exile. These include Martin Falkhagen played by Francis Lederer who was later to feature in Pandora’s Box and live a long life in film and education, stopping work just before he died aged 100! Born in 1899 Lederer lived through until the 21^st Century and also saw action in the Great War for the Austrian-Hungarian Imperial Army. There’s a collection of photographs at his mother’s desk and one includes him in his uniform as she muses over all those lost in the war; a time when the losses were still so keenly felt across Europe.

 

Refuge is all about the War, it’s about loss and injustice and poor people trying to make ends meet in a society with huge inequality. It doesn’t beat the drum in the manner of say Kuhle Wampe but it is presenting a shared experience to an audience fully ware of the circumstances… Martin wants to make ends meet with people he loves and, as we learn, he turns his back on easier options, a man of principle in a country that, sadly, couldn’t always afford them.

 

People didn’t go to the cinema for politics, they went to see actors like Lederer and, especially, Henny Porten, living life as they did and here the film is as political as it needs to be. Germany was broken, what was to be done? Henny and Martin just want to get on with their lives and their love.

Henny Porten's character goes to work

Now, that’s jumping the gun… but yes, Henny meets an exhausted Martin after he has tramped his way to Berlin form the eastern border and slept rough at the allotment. She invites him back to the apartment she shares in a run-down tenement with the Schurich family, father (Max Maximilian), mother (Margarete Kupfer) and flighty daughter Guste (Alice Hechy). Their living space is cluttered and humble, with a bunk also being rented out to a loud-mouthed butcher, Kölling (Carl de Vogt).

 

Later that evening Kölling arrives back drunk gathering himself just enough to insult Martin and Hanne before the younger man falls deeply asleep. He’s still asleep the next day as Mrs Schurich and Hanne go to work in a vegetable stall at the market, the latter having to contend with the butcher’s “banter”… he doesn’t mince his words. Meanwhile Guste is fascinating by this sleeping prince… and flirts with him once he does awaken only for Hanne to rebuff her.

 

Hanne and Martin, well Hanne mostly, fall out with three out of four of the household – only her workmate supports her – and she goes off to another block to stay with her best friend Marie Jankowsky (Lotte Stein) who’s husband is away. Here they enjoy some freedom and begin to fall in love.

 

Mathilde Sussin

Meanwhile, across town, Martin’s background is revealed as his elder brother Otto Falkhagen (Bodo Bronsky) puts an advert in the paper calling for information about his missing brother. If nothing is forthcoming Otto will have him declared dead and therefore no longer able to benefit from the family’s fortune. Naturally mother Else (Mathilde Sussin) holds on to hope but Otto, having fallen out with Martin over the revolution, misses him rather less.

 

Martin gets a job as a manual labourer on the build for the Berlin subway and for a time the two are happy and plan to get married. But we know the lose ends will need to be tied and that a reckoning will need to be had.

 

What I like about this film is the balance of the characters, most of whom have shades of grey even the boorish butcher who shows concern and provides help when needed. The verbal scuffles are exactly as you’d expect from people living in such cramped conditions and, whilst the politics is under played, the crowds of genuine urchins who stare at the rich visitors and their car when Martin’s mother visits one tenement block. These buildings are all too real in comparison to the stage designs of say Murnau’s Last Laugh and the unpaid extras speak for themselves.

 

Simple pleasures for Hanne and Martin

Direct Carl Froelich keeps things at a believable pace whilst his cinematographer, Gustave Preiss works wonders, especially in catching the flight of expression across Porten’s face. She’s no Garbo but she is a great technician and so watchable.

 

The film was a success with Hanns Horkheimer of the Berliner Tageblatt raving: Henny Porten… has grown from a propaganda star to a human actress of such shocking urgency that, as a comparative standard, I would have to name the most sublime names even in spoken theatre…

 

For her alone the film is worth watching but this “small story” is still powerful for the concentrated and commonplace drama it presents. Günter A. Buchwald of course delivers the poignant and perfectly balanced support it needs and it still amazes me how he can do so playing violin and piano both at once!

 

Bravo Günter and danke Bonn again!!

Das Buch über Pandora… Pandora's Box (1929), with Stephen Horne and Pamela Hutchinson, Phoenix Cinema

Once more out of The Box my friends but there’s no getting tired of this film especially in the wonderful surroundings of the old Phoenix and with Stephen Horne’s endlessly-inventive playing.

This is a vital film, one of the cornerstones of the silent film canon and my gateway to the whole shebang (starting with a DVD purchase in Park Street, Bristol in 2003 if you want to know). Pandora’s Box is worthy of the highest recognition and it has long merited its own book: now it has one, written by silent film expert Pamela Hutchinson and it’s the book it deserved. With her Silent London blog, Pamela has been helping to re-invigorate the British silent scene and she has played a major part in opening up the world of live silent screenings for myself and many others.

Pamela writes with an expert eye, easy wit and steadfast concision; there is much attention to detail in the book but it is all explained with fluid precision. The research is thorough, with revelations both scandalous and surprising and this is one of the best of the BFI’s Film Classics series I’ve read,  achieving its key objectives with ease, Pandora’s Box is engrossing, informative and entertaining.

That said, perhaps the highest praise I can give is that it made me experience the film in a completely different way, informed by its break down of Pabst’s directorial style and the way he worked with Louise Brooks in particular. With just five weeks shooting, perfectionist Pabst managed to construct one of the greatest silent films and he made the absolute most of his uniquely eye-catching talent.

Not only was the great “bridge-burner” Brooks temperamentally unsuited to the job of movie star she was also just not that bothered. Pabst deserves more credit for plugging her super-natural energies into the context of his film especially as she spoke no German…

Pamela introduced the screening and included some delicious titbits, Marlene being on the verge of signing up as Lulu just as Paramount gave their approval for the loan of their 21-year old misfit and Brooks’ troubled relationship with most of her co-stars (Gustav Diessl excepted…). Brooksie crashed her career but she found subsequent redemption after this controversial film was rediscovered decades after its chances of success was censored away. She wrote with fierce eloquence about her old career and spent the last third of her life celebrated by cineastes and influencing so many… not just in film but across our culture: Brooks equals self-determinated cool and she is forever now.

The book balances the, er… books in terms of Herr Pabst and whilst his Nazi collaborations no doubt damaged his post-war reputation (he did voice his un-leveraged opinions after the war), you can see how his mico-management helped to bring out the most from his crew and cast. Hutchinson relates a story of how cameraman Günther Krampf argued over whether a shot of Brooks and Fritz Kortner canoodling on her couch could be made: the director wanted the camera to close in and then move up out of view of the illicit “action” below. Krampf said it couldn’t be done but it was and we saw it today.

Pabst encouraged his team to voice such opinion though and this team ethic no doubts helps explain the results… five weeks of intensive work that, nowadays, would barely allow for a few Josh Whedon re-shoots to lighten the Zac Snyder darkness of Justice League or similar blockbuster.

Pabst is known for his abilities with actors and whilst he cast for character as well as range he was delighted to discover that his Lulu was a professional dancer. The moments when Brooks dances are visceral and define her character so well especially in the opening sequence. Brooks describes their collaboration as that between a choreographer and dancer and it’s also the dance of light on the most perfectly coiffured bob in history.

Lulu also dances with Countess Augusta Geschwitz played by Alice Roberts/Roberte, who Hutchinson rightly points out deserves more credit for her ground-breaking portrayal of lesbian longing. The Countess is an important part of the story especially given the way she, like all the men, is ultimately discarded after use. She looks lovingly straight into Lulu’s light and is doomed to shrivel in the shade.

No one escapes unscathed as Lulu burns… least of all herself. Wedekin’s story is unrelenting and whilst Pabst moved away from it to create a more socially-conscious story there is a price to pay for the earthy spirit.

Stephen Horne accompanied using an electric keyboard, accordion, flute and assorted percussion and, it seemed to me that he was finding new themes and responses. His ability to weave defined progressions into a two-hours plus improvisation is extraordinary and whilst he could make CCT footage of the A10 entertaining, working with Pabst, Brooksie and company he pulls you right into the centre of their silvery-shadowed world.

In the end, as Francis Lederer’s Alwa staggers into the fog after the Salvation Army, you are slightly dazed… You have to hope for the best and that’s the best you can hope for as the poet Peter Wylie once said and hope is, as Pamela points out, the last gift from Pandora’s box.

I try to write about the experience of watching silent film live and normally that’s a combination of variables led by the film, the accompaniment, audience and auditorium. This book added a vital new element and, I know it’s a bit much to ask, but could we have some more Pam?

As it is, it’s a text I will return to. A five-star job!!

Pandora’s Box is available from all good booksellers, the Amazon and, of course the BFI. If you like the film, the actress, silent or any film-making you should buy with confidence.

Earthy spirit… Pandora's Box (1929), BFI with Stephen Horne

How many times have I watched this film and yet after a trying start to the year and the cruddiest of days I was once again completely and utterly in the moment from the first flash of Brooksie’s smile to the last: energised and engaged by a beguiling combination of Pabst’s genius and Stephen Horne’s way with musical instruments.

I sometimes almost forget that there are actually other performers in Pandora’s Box and I really should tip my hat to Fritz Kortner’s broodingly un-hinged masculinity as the sexually dumbfounded Dr. Ludwig Schön: he can’t live without her and he really can’t live with her. He attempts to move onto a more socially-suitable sexual target but back-stage his will proves inversely proportional to his physical power and he falls once more into the enticing arms of Lulu. As his fiancée opens the door the look of cruel triumph in Louise Brooks’ face is unsurpassably delicious.

Fritz Kortner broods

Other men are also available – in fact, for Lulu, most men and some women – with Schön’s son Alwa (Francis Lederer) next in the frame. He seems a genuine friend, the only one who doesn’t want anything from Lulu and that is why she likes him, although she does regret the fact that he may not love her. But of course he does and easily cracks once she applies the pressure of needing a well-tailored shoulder to cry on.

Who is Lulu? She is radiance and allure in concentrated tactical form with short-term sexual strategies that leave her companions confused and dazed. But she’s not the classic vamp and this film’s enduring structure provides her with more than that: she’s a curious cat and we know where that’s leading.

Like father like son

Carl Goetz as Schigolch is her original benefactor and father… a strange man unlikely to be a blood relative (sorry Carl) but who supports and feeds off his “daughter” right till the end. Maybe they are family after all as he is as concerned with earthly pleasure as she even if it’s brandy and Christmas pudding.

Schigolch initially tries to line up his protégé with the plump strong man Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) but his offer of a circus double act is trumped when Schön poaches her for Alwa’s play… with consequences for all.

Brooks was just 22 when making this film and everything was coming to her as quickly and easily as for Lulu; attention just a smile away.

J. Hoberman, in his essay for the Criterion edition, claims that Pabst “virtually invented” Brooks and yet whilst there is ample focus on her throughout the film – a quite dazzling array of close-ups and stunning costumes – the director was working with a talent and a presence you can clearly see in her earlier films – not just A Girl in Every Port but also Beggars of Life and Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em.

Counterfactually we’ll never know what happens to Brooks minus GW Pabst and vice versa but what they made stays magnificently alive. Pandora’s Box is strongest when the focus is on its actress as in the opening sequence: the call girl sashaying her way powerfully around her plush apartment, enjoying her freedom, relishing her casually-exerted power - almost unconsciously alive and living every moment a thrill.

The story moves into darker tone as Lulu takes the stage and then Herr Doctor’s hand, celebrating her victory on stage in front of a thousand staring eyes.

The loyal Countess

 The women are manipulated as easily as the men including poor love-sick Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) who will do anything for her girl even if, when intimacy looks near, Lulu just shrugs it off with a smile that lingers very little on any serious thought of her friend’s true intention.

Lulu just is, even when taking out the competition, Schön’s intended Charlotte Marie Adelaide von Zarnikow (Daisy D'ora), despatched with the venomous glee described above by the film’s and the silent era’s sexual superpower.

The former dancer and Ziegfeld Girl power-glides through the film, spinning her way through Pabst’s greedy focus with boundless energy, bible black eyes and that perfect pout so rich with the promise of her smile.

Yes, curls. What of it?

But then the restraining order kicks in and I need a little more objective contextual reasoning…

Lulu and Jack: why is that such a perfect couple? Gustav Diessl played Jack the Ripper, much to Louise’s delight as he was her pick of the cast… He is the man “no one can save”, he doesn’t even have any money and yet Lulu takes him upstairs just because she likes him. Curiosity killing the cat or something more? The Ripper kills the things he loves and the connection to the “little death” is hard to ignore yet what’s in it for Lulu? Does she want to put everything back in the box and is this the only way she can free Alwa and Schigolch?

Gustav Diessl, definitely not Stephen Horne

Stephen Horne played so carefully well in these moments. This being one of The Canon, he must have played along dozens of times and yet his accompaniment was as fresh as the breeze that seems to always whisper Louise and he paced his affecting phrasing with jazz-age assurance - like Miles Davis – leaving gaps of intent that enriched the notes to follow.

This was as close to silent cinematic perfection as you have any right to expect on the 3^rd day of a nervy New Year: if you haven’t seen Lulu on the big screen you really don’t want to miss this.

Pandora’s Box plays three more times at the BFI - with more excellent live accompanists - and you should book your ticket now! You really don't want to upset Lulu do you?!