Pandora's Box (1929)

Pandora's Box (German: Die Büchse der Pandora) is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904).[1] Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortne

Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. With Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz. The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.

A free-loving, status-climbing dancer murders her rich paramour, then takes up with a succession of other lovers, gradually descending to the streets as a hooker -- where she has the incredible misfortune to proposition Jack the Ripper! Pandora's Box is an acknowledged masterpiece of sensual imagery.

One of the masters of early German cinema, G. W. Pabst had an innate talent for discovering actresses (including Greta Garbo). And perhaps none of his female stars shone brighter than Kansas native and onetime Ziegfeld girl Louise Brooks, whose legendary persona was defined by Pabst's lurid, controversial melodrama _Pandora's Box_. Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu, whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with. Daring and stylish, _Pandora's Box_ is one of silent cinema's great masterworks and a testament to Brooks's dazzling individuality.

Louise Brooks regards us from the screen as if the screen were

A young innocent's sexuality destroys all who come near her.