Die Büchse der Pandora
G W Pabst (1929)
According to the introduction at the BFI, the film was cut to around 85 minutes, not much more than half its original length, for commercial release. I felt guilty because I’d have preferred something a good deal shorter than this 131-minute version. Some of Pandora’s Box, adapted by Pabst and Ladislaus Vajda from two plays by Wedekind (Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box), is punitively boring. In the early stages it was like watching a ballet – with performers extending or reiterating gestures and emotions long after you’d got what they were expressing. I always find this difficult to tolerate in cinema, because of its ability to develop character and story more deftly and economically than ballet, opera or (usually) theatre: you just want people to get on with it. But this silent film is an extraordinary confection. The story of the amoral seductress Lulu is sometimes powerful as melodrama yet often fascinating in an almost documentary way. When Lulu’s trial ends in chaos, it seems frighteningly real chaos; a fight that breaks out at a card table has a similar quality. There are passages that are gorgeously artificial, others where you seem to be watching a distant past brought to life. The film is especially beautiful and riveting in the closing stages when the action switches to London. The night scenes there, featuring a Salvation Army band playing Christmas carols and Jack the Ripper, are emotionally as well as technically rich: the chiaroscuro effects (the cinematographer was Günther Krampf), in the context of this story, are a strong reminder of how German expressionism influenced the look of film noir.
Louise Brooks’s Lulu can truly be described as an iconic screen image and Brooks is very remarkable. She’s repeatedly required to go through dramatic routines which should make her playing antique yet she seems thoroughly modern. It’s perhaps because her looks and acting style have proved influential that she brings to mind other, later stars (but surprising people – Sally was reminded of Gwyneth Paltrow). The father and son competing for Lulu seem more than a generation apart in the ways they perform. Francis Lederer is strong and emotionally believable as the son; Fritz Kortner as his father has a compelling bestial quality but a laborious and self-conscious acting style. Gustav Diessl is sensationally good as Jack the Ripper. The BFI show had a live piano accompaniment more complex than those I’ve heard before at screenings of silent classics, with a track featuring other musical instruments.
5 September 2011
