Movie · 1929SAFO Pick
Pandora's Box
A landmark of silent cinema, Pandora's Box follows the magnetic Lulu through desire, scandal and tragedy -while introducing one of the earliest explicitly lesbian characters in film history.
LesbianSapphicQueer History
SAFO editor's note
Queer cinema didn't begin with modern LGBTQ+ films. In 1929, Pandora's Box was already putting lesbian desire on screen. Almost a century later, Countess Geschwitz makes this silent-film classic an extraordinary piece of our cultural history.
G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box is one of the defining films of the Weimar era, starring Louise Brooks in her iconic role as Lulu - a charismatic young woman whose independence, sexuality and relationships unsettle the society around her.
Among the people drawn to Lulu is Countess Augusta Geschwitz, played by Alice Roberts, whose love for Lulu made her one of the earliest explicitly lesbian characters represented on screen.
Nearly a century after its release, the film remains remarkable not simply because queer desire appears in it, but because of how unusually visible that desire was for cinema of its time. Pandora's Box is both a major work of silent film and an important piece of queer screen history.
- Director / creators
- G. W. Pabst
- Cast
- Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Alice Roberts, Carl Goetz, Gustav Diessl
- Country
- Germany
- Genres
- Drama, Silent Film, Weimar Cinema
- Languages
- German (silent film / German intertitles)