Actress Louise Brooks, the star of G.W. Pabst's masterpiece "Pandora's Box" (1929).
By David D. Robbins Jr. | The Fade Out
Louise Brooks was the face that launched a thousand ships, in a thousand different ways. You can see glimpses of her in Isabella Rossellini in “Blue Velvet” (1986), Juliette Binoche in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Blue” (1993), Anna Karina in Jean Luc Godard’s “Vivre sa vie” (1962) and even in novels, like Adolfo Bioy Casares’ “La invencion de Morel” (1940). The list is astounding, especially given that Brooks made only twenty-four films between 1925 and 1938, and she was largely misused in Hollywood, ending her career in movies like “Windy Riley Goes Hollywood”, a two-reeler directed by blacklisted funny-man Fatty Arbuckle, and other bit parts in Westerns. It was also her beautiful face that caused a number of film aficionados to wonder if she could act at all or if her ability rested only in being able to seduce men with a glance. French-German film critic, Lotte Eisner, wrote in her book “Die dämonische Leinwand”: “Was Louise Brooks a great artist or only a dazzling creature whose beauty leads the spectator to endow her with complexities of which she herself was unaware?” Later in life Eisner re-wrote that sentence to say Brooks was indeed both.
Film critic David Thomson accurately suggests the older Brooks, who became a recluse living in Rochester, N.Y., preferred Eisner’s earlier critique. Brooks may have been as calculated in the sculpting of her own public persona as she was in combing down her bob, but it’s hard to believe there was ever a question about her acting skills. And it’s difficult to believe she was living hand-to-mouth, her true gifts unrecognized in America, until the help of James Card, curator of films at Eastman House came to her rescue. Her work in two films with German film giant G.W. Pabst (“Pandora’s Box” and “The Diary of a Lost Girl”), should have been more than enough to keep her from being relegated to the heap of forgotten and under-appreciated silent-film actresses. Anyone who has seen Brooks in Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box” (1929) knows the film works largely because of her. Like the Greek myth of Pandora, Brooks is the film’s unstoppable force. Pabst cast Brooks in “Pandora’s Box” after having seen her in “A Girl In Every Port” (1928), and it was a selection that defined them both. Pabst proved to be a master of finding or shaping female talent, creating vehicles for Brigitte Helm, Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen. But finding Brooks, languishing away in mediocre Hollywood films, was genius.
“Pandora’s Box” is in some ways as enigmatic as Brooks herself. The film needed her. It needed an actress whose beauty was such that it leads men directly to the underworld. Or more accurately, this movie is about how men bring ruin on themselves in pursuit beauty. Brooks plays Lulu, who begins the film as the mistress of a rich newspaper editor, Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner). He can’t marry her because of the scandal it would cause, and he’s already supposed to be marrying someone else. But once Dr. Schön’s bride-to-be catches the editor with Lulu in the costume room at a playhouse, looking as if they’d just done the deed, he’s forced to marry Lulu. This leads to the famed scene where Dr. Schön’s jealousy drives him to want Lulu to kill herself to end his torment, but he ends up dead in the process. Dr. Schön’s son, in order to keep Lulu out of prison, leaves with her and the two become fugitives on the run. He sinks into poverty, gambling away any money they have. Other men compound their problems, including a showman named Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig), who tries to take advantage of the situation, saying he’ll give Lulu up to the police if she doesn’t give him money. Eventually, Lulu is driven to prostitution on the streets of London, and on one fateful night unknowingly befriends Jack The Ripper.
“Pandora’s Box” is a movie about degradation, sexuality, allure, selfishness, obsession and male perversity. In Germany, film-goers were as aghast at the movie’s immorality, as they were that an American from Kansas would play Lulu, a role originating with the play of the same name written by German Frank Wedekind in 1904. Wedekind’s play was deemed artless and lurid and largely condemned. But that’s where the combination of Pabst and Brooks works its magic. Pabst changed the story into a psychological piece, and Brooks transcended the role. The wonder of Brooks’ performance didn’t rest simply in her beauty. It was a lightness of touch beyond her sultry looks that gave the film a sense of tragedy the original play never had. Pabst certainly knew this, which is why we can believe near the movie’s end, that Jack the Ripper would see her grace, her charm and humanity and want to drop the knife — at least momentarily.
But to have tragedy, there must be a sense that the descent is inevitable, and that it happens to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Sure, there are times where Brooks’ beauty is so overwhelming, that it seems she had little to do but walk into the frame to create art. New Yorker film critic Lawrence Tynan, who himself was obsessed with Brooks, wrote in a 1979 piece, “She has run through my life like a magnetic thread — this shameless urchin tomboy, this unbroken, unbreakable porcelain filly. She is a prairie princess, equally at home in a waterfront bar and in the royal suite at Neuschwanstein; a creature of impulse, a creature of impulses, a temptress with no pretensions, capable of dissolving into a giggling fit at a peak of erotic ecstasy; amoral but totally selfless, with that sleek jet cloche of hair that rings such a peal of bells in my subconscious. In short, the only star actress I can imagine either being enslaved by or wanting to enslave; and a dark lady worthy of any poet’s devotion: For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”
It’s a gorgeously written piece of hyperbole, perhaps flowering with Tynan’s own thoughts of seducing an aging actress in mind. But cutting through the worshipful words, Tynan is right about one thing, Brooks’ performance in “Pandora’s Box” is a marvel of film for her ability to combine allure and naivety with ease (“a temptress with no pretensions”). It’s a gift that few can pull of without looking like one is acting. It takes a near hyper self-awareness. Or perhaps Brooks truly was just playing herself, as she’s said all along. Note: You can see the best available version of “Pandora’s Box” on DVD thanks to Criterion Collection, and “Diary of a Lost Girl” (1929) via Kino.
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