Sexylocher Masterful Movie

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Die Büchse der Pandora" or "Pandora's Box" is a 1929 black-and-white silent movie, so this one is already over 85 years old. It stars Louise Brooks, a dark-haired actress, who is probably more known today than she was back then. Despite being American-born she starred several times in the films of Georg Wilhelm Pabst, one of Germany's top silent film directors. Unfortunately, I cannot appreciate this film here as much as most others do judging from the movie's IMDb rating. It has an interesting premise, especially taking into account when it was made, but that's also it pretty much. There are a couple fine scenes in here, but it's not even close to being enough for a film that runs considerable over 2 hours. I was pretty much bored by it I have to say and it also did not help that I found the main character very uninteresting despite how hard they tried to make her as interesting and controversial as possible. Then again, I am not the greatest silent film fan out there, so I may be a bit biased, but nonetheless there are a handful of films from the silent era that I managed to appreciate a lot more than this one. Then again, there's also some that I liked even less, such as the Mabuse film for example. As a whole, this may have been a much better watch at 80 minutes perhaps, but for this massive duration the material simply wasn't enough. An epitome of how quality does not match quantity. Not recommended.

Jackson Booth-Millard I found this German made silent film listed in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, the title didn't suggest anything to me automatically, apart from possibly the famous mythological story being involved, but I watched out of curiosity. Basically in Weimar, Germany, Lulu (Louise Brooks) is a beautiful dancer and prostitute, and also the mistress of well respected newspaper publisher and owner Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner), she lives in an apartment that he pays for, she lives off the money of other men who she seduces with her both enchanting and her innocent spell. One day she is happy to have a visit from old patron and her former "protector" Schigolch (Carl Goetz), with him has brought agent Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) who is offering her an opportunity and inviting her to dance in a play. When Dr. Schön tells Lulu he is going to get married to aristocratic Charlotte Marie Adelaide v. Zarnikow (Daisy D'Ora), she uses whatever techniques she can to force him into marrying her instead. On the day of their wedding however, in the bedroom the groom finds his bride partying with Schigolch and Rodrigo Quast, and in anger he gets his gun out, but it is her that he forces to pull the trigger and shoot him, following this she is arrested. Six months pass and Lulu faces the courtroom, and despite the help of Alwa Schön (Francis Lederer), the doctor's son, and his friend Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts), she is sentenced to five years in prison as not all the facts of the crime are sure, but she escapes with Alwa when her friends cause a havoc. They decide to travel together to Paris, but they actually end up in a squalid part of London, it is on a Christmas Eve that Lulu meets her fate when there is a prostitution situation, killer Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl) is her client it ends with her murdered, while Alwa disappears to join to Salvation Army. American Brooks became a cinematic icon following this film playing the Femme Fatale, and rightly so, with no sound this film relies entirely on the expressionistic imagery and an atmospheric story of false love, sexuality and occasional violence, it certainly has a good amount of tension and intrigue to keep you watching, a most worthwhile silent drama. Very good!

sashank_kini-1 Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent film about the life of Lulu, a beautiful, lively, gregarious but opportunistic and manipulative woman who gets everything she wants with her seductive charms. Her life takes a positive turn at first when one of her lovers', a wealthy editor in chief Mr Schon agrees to marry her, and she is able to break into show biz. But after she kills Mr. Schon in retaliation, her life disintegrates till she is reduced to go back to her old profession as a street-walker.     A lot many viewers today regard Louise Brooks' uncanny performance as bold, uncompromising and naturalistic. However, in 1929 soon after the film's release, a reviewer from New York Times had said that her expressions were 'hard to decipher at times'. After watching the film twice in two days, I too had similar question about Brook's character Lulu: what is her ultimate aim? Sometimes  we find her confident and heedless of her actions but at others she radiates warmth and sympathy which contradicts her former emotions.      Take Lulu's relationship with Mr. Schon, for instance. At the stage show in Act 3, Ludwig Schon along with his fiancé oversee the backstage happenings. When Lulu finds her lover with his fiancé, she flips out. The camera pans on her face and she genuinely seems heartbroken in that frame. That act made me believe Lulu, despite her promiscuity and love for money, truly loved the rich editor in chief. But during act 4 and especially in Act 5 after the ruckus in the courtroom scene, I found myself confused about Lulu's character. I remember Natasha's character from War and Peace who took some reckless decisions driven by instinct but that character, despite being unpredictable, at least had consistency. Therefore we could anticipate to an extent what she might do and become more curious about the situation. I could not say the same about Lulu at points in the film, and this may be partly attributed to the fact that the movie is silent and therefore doesn't have rather advantage of dialogs.Had there been dialogs, I would've probably got a better insight into Lulu's personality. But I should credit Brooks for giving her best shot and making her character starkly different and almost contemporary for that time; her killer looks are something to die for, seriously.     I also didn't find  some cohesiveness in the storytelling as well. Gustav Diessl's character, a brutal motif serving as a resolution to Lulu's life, should've got more screen time. In fact, I was under the impression she would ditch Alva, the son of Late Schon and Lulu's hapless lover, and make off with that waiter whom she was flirting for a moment at the 'hospitable and discreet' gambling den. I also felt the character of Schigolch could have had more development; it was ironical when Lulu ends up at a garret ( she had mentioned before that she wouldn't want to go back with Schigolch to his old garret), but the initial scene when Lulu danced as Schigolch played his mouth organ could've been brought back towards the end ( like showing Lulu putting on an entertaining act along with Schigolch on the streets trying to fetch some money or attracting some bawdy men perhaps). For some reason, the initial unimportant scenes, though entertaining enough, are unnecessarily stretched. For example, when Lulu refuses to perform the skit, the director could've showed her running straight into the property room instead of having Schon coming to her, pressing her arm in front of the crew and ordering her to perform ending with Lulu telling Rodrigo that they'd do the skit they had planned, before getting into the room with Schon. The film's take on lesbianism is praiseworthy and Alice Roberts deserves credit for not shying away from the role. In fact, I heard she had pitched the idea of making the character of Countess Augusta a lesbian. She displays her affection so naturally, understanding the essence of her role. I remember an episode from the reality show Top Chef when one of the female contestants was highly appreciative of a fellow lady contender, and was extremely upset when the latter was eliminated. It was later told during the reunion episode that the two women had pursued a relationship after the show. And I saw the same behavior from Roberts' character - two thumbs up for her performance. Even though chiaroscuro is heavily used to the point that sometimes characters lose their facial features, I didn't think there was any purpose to the lighting whereas in movies like Citizen Kane, the lighting created depth, style and personality. The background music is flat and for most part inconsequential and the reason I could not find a connection with the film could be attributed to this element; it seemed to say 'watch the film like you watch any other film, and when the movie finishes, you leave'. For a movie that included controversial subjects, couldn't the background music be more radical and risky instead of a generic orchestra?  Pandora's Box seems to have gained critical acclaim over the years. But apart from Louise Brooks' risky performance and the fact that controversial subjects were tackled, I did not know what I was supposed to feel after the movie. Is Pandora's Box really worth the curious peek or is it just an empty box?

JoeytheBrit Louise Brooks, eh? What a woman. She illuminates the screen in this lurid cautionary tale about the dangers of having a good time, to the point where any other actor sharing the screen is simply forgotten by the audience. Strange that she ended up working in a department store…This film is typical – albeit a superior example - of silent movie story-telling. The visuals take precedence over the dialogue, meaning frequent long sequences during which director G. W. Pabst carefully builds up the atmosphere or simply invites us to dwell, like the male characters in the film, on Ms. Brooks' luminous beauty. It means many people today will find the slow pace difficult to handle, even though the plot reads like something out of a cheap pulp novel. Here we have murder, avarice, greed, infidelity, slave-trading, serial killers, gambling addiction, incipient alcoholism, unrequited lesbian love and blackmail – a potently torrid mix by anyone's standards, but it all seems a little dull.