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
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