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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Pandora's Box (1928)
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles:
Film / Movies (Fiction):
Pandora's Box (1928)
Author: Stephen P. Ryder
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 08:51 pm |        | Pandora's Box (Büchse der Pandora, Die)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1928
Silent, 133 minutes |
Author: John Omlor
Monday, 26 February 2001 - 11:49 pm | | It should probably be mentioned here that Pabst's film, starring the incomparable Louise Brooks as Lulu, was based on the scandalous play of the same name by German playwright Frank Wederkind. The play, and his earlier work *Earth Spirit* which also contributes material to the film, were composed at the turn of the century, and the Ripper references in the original *Pandora's Box* are some of the earliest in European Drama. Also, incidentally, there is an early 20th Century opera by Berg entitled *Lulu* based on the same works. Yes, Jack has an operatic role as well.
Wederkind's original drama was banned in Germany shortly after its opening, for having immoral and lascivious content. The controversy centered not so much on the shocking death of Lulu (who has moved to London from Germany and is working as a prostitute in Whitechapel) at the hands of the infamous killer, but about the lesbian relationship implied in the text. Interestingly, in the opera, Lulu's lesbian admirer follows her to 1888 London and also dies there after she has contracted cholera from Lulu during an elaborate sequence of exchanging costumes to escape from a hospital (it is a complex tale fit only for opera, I think).
In any case, I have never learned how or when Wederkind found any specific details about the Ripper case, but there is a good deal of critical literature, some of it quite recent, on the subject of why Lulu meets such a graphic and notorious end, given her character's effect on men. The critical texts now deal with both Wederkind's plays and Pabst's landmark film.
The film revived Louise Brooks' career after she had left the studios in Hollywood (as a very young actress, bravely telling them where they could go when they turned down her demand for a raise). She would follow it up with Pabst's *Diary of a Lost Girl* and the rest, as they say, is film history. Her career and tragic later half of her life are fascinating stories for another place and time. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 27 February 2001 - 01:12 pm | | Hi, John:
The first serious study of the Ripper case to appear in English was the book by Leonard Matters, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, published by W. H. Allen in 1929. Since the film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Pandora's Box, appeared in 1928, the year prior to the appearance of Matters' book, and the play of the same name by German playwright Frank Wederkind presumably years before that (I don't know the year, possibly you do), I think we might assume that Wederkind drew the source material for his play from German newspapers or penny (pfennig?) dreadfuls of his day. The Ripper crimes were reported worldwide and would have been well covered in Germany as well as elsewhere across Europe, with the recently established wire services facilitating speedy transmission of the ghastly news. I hope this has helped.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 27 February 2001 - 02:20 pm | | Hi Chris,
Indeed, I have always suspected that Wederkind drew his material from the penny press and the sensational coverage in even the "major" European papers. Linda Hutcheon, in her book on disease and death in opera, dates Wederkind's two plays as being written between 1892 and 1894. Pandora's Box is not successfuly performed on the stage, in Germany, I think, until 1905. However, if the play was finished by '94, then Wederkind was no doubt using the popular media reports for his inspiration. The play, of course, draws on very few specifics about the Ripper case. This all does demonstrate, however, that the "legendary" status of the Ripper as literary figure and horror icon was well on the way to being cemented into the cultural imagination of the rest of the world, even outside of the strictly popular media, within a decade after the crimes had stopped.
--John |
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