In the interest of fairness, I'll start off by stating that Louise Brooks has clearly improved a lot as an actress since her blink-and-you've-missed-it screen debut in 1925. The much-reiterated statement that she was some kind of gifted modernistic being with a unique talent showing up the caricatured pantomiming of her contemporaries I still find to be not only at odds with reality, but insulting to just about every silent actress above the level of Mack Sennett's custard pies; Mabel Normand, come to think of it, included. But I will say here and now that Miss Brooks performs at least adequately throughout this film, and there were moments when she actually impressed me. I'm not sure I'd have liked "Pandora's Box" any better with any other star.
But I didn't much like the film, and I'm uncertain how much of that is down to its style -- 'German expressionism' -- and how much results from the nihilistic nature of the Lulu story: realistically, neither this nor the opera were ever going to be a pleasant watch. I'm not sure it's intended so much as a normal story as it is as a representation of a national cultural artifact -- a legend, if you will. I frankly suspect that what the director was trying to put into it was not the same as what I would have liked to be able to get out of it.
One of my problems with "Pandora's Box" was that none of the characters is very likable; it makes it hard to 'take sides' with any of them, which makes it hard to get emotionally involved. Lulu herself is at best identifiable as a spoilt child -- at worst her actions seem more or less random, following perhaps the impulse of a passing moment.
A serious flaw in the technical structure of the film (which, it occurs to me, may be a consequence of translation into English) is that in places the intertitles are positioned between shots in such a way that it is unclear which character is addressing which, causing grave ambiguity. I don't think I've ever encountered a silent film with this basic problem before, let alone one with such a high reputation, and I can only assume that the grammatical structure of German must make it more obvious.
There is no very clear plot-line: the film is, presumably deliberately, constructed as a series of chronologically separate episodes in the life of Lulu, run together in a single strip with next to no indication of when we move from one to another, let alone of where we are and how the characters got from A to B. Every time the story jumped ahead in time, the first few scenes had a sense of mental disconnect while I tried to extrapolate the gap as new details emerged.
Looking back, my impression now of the film is of a nightmare, not of the frightening sort but the vaguely disturbing kind that doesn't quite make sense. Threats and disquiets float in and out of the corner of vision, and everything is faintly tainted, though you're not always sure how. To this extent "Pandora's Box" is powerful indeed; and oddly enough, I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned that it contains humorous moments, even if these tend towards the grotesque.
But in its shadowy decadence I found it lacking in all but atmosphere. The pacing is slow, often dragging, with the camera lingering again and again around a room: it's as if the director is interested more in establishing shots than in the action. Some of the most significant moments to the plot are undercut by over-the-top elements -- Dr Schoen's endless staggering death scene, the normally excellent Alwa's bug-eyed miming of horror, the homicidal maniac who suddenly becomes murderous when the light goes out -- which is somewhat ironic in a film we are told is more 'modern' than contemporary silent productions in which such acting would have been considered terribly old-fashioned.
It has no narrative urgency. It has distant, often arbitrary characters. It is, I would guess, intended as a fable of archetypes rather than a story of ordinary humans, and it's almost certainly not aiming for realism. I have much the same reaction to this as I did to "Metropolis", and people say both of them are timeless classics -- so I'm wondering if there is a certain German school of mannered cinema with which I just don't get on.
But I didn't much like the film, and I'm uncertain how much of that is down to its style -- 'German expressionism' -- and how much results from the nihilistic nature of the Lulu story: realistically, neither this nor the opera were ever going to be a pleasant watch. I'm not sure it's intended so much as a normal story as it is as a representation of a national cultural artifact -- a legend, if you will. I frankly suspect that what the director was trying to put into it was not the same as what I would have liked to be able to get out of it.
One of my problems with "Pandora's Box" was that none of the characters is very likable; it makes it hard to 'take sides' with any of them, which makes it hard to get emotionally involved. Lulu herself is at best identifiable as a spoilt child -- at worst her actions seem more or less random, following perhaps the impulse of a passing moment.
A serious flaw in the technical structure of the film (which, it occurs to me, may be a consequence of translation into English) is that in places the intertitles are positioned between shots in such a way that it is unclear which character is addressing which, causing grave ambiguity. I don't think I've ever encountered a silent film with this basic problem before, let alone one with such a high reputation, and I can only assume that the grammatical structure of German must make it more obvious.
There is no very clear plot-line: the film is, presumably deliberately, constructed as a series of chronologically separate episodes in the life of Lulu, run together in a single strip with next to no indication of when we move from one to another, let alone of where we are and how the characters got from A to B. Every time the story jumped ahead in time, the first few scenes had a sense of mental disconnect while I tried to extrapolate the gap as new details emerged.
Looking back, my impression now of the film is of a nightmare, not of the frightening sort but the vaguely disturbing kind that doesn't quite make sense. Threats and disquiets float in and out of the corner of vision, and everything is faintly tainted, though you're not always sure how. To this extent "Pandora's Box" is powerful indeed; and oddly enough, I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned that it contains humorous moments, even if these tend towards the grotesque.
But in its shadowy decadence I found it lacking in all but atmosphere. The pacing is slow, often dragging, with the camera lingering again and again around a room: it's as if the director is interested more in establishing shots than in the action. Some of the most significant moments to the plot are undercut by over-the-top elements -- Dr Schoen's endless staggering death scene, the normally excellent Alwa's bug-eyed miming of horror, the homicidal maniac who suddenly becomes murderous when the light goes out -- which is somewhat ironic in a film we are told is more 'modern' than contemporary silent productions in which such acting would have been considered terribly old-fashioned.
It has no narrative urgency. It has distant, often arbitrary characters. It is, I would guess, intended as a fable of archetypes rather than a story of ordinary humans, and it's almost certainly not aiming for realism. I have much the same reaction to this as I did to "Metropolis", and people say both of them are timeless classics -- so I'm wondering if there is a certain German school of mannered cinema with which I just don't get on.