monday, may 25, 2009
Pandora's Box
Film, due to its nature as a primarily visual medium, is often a pursuit of the proper objects of our obsessions. More often than not this ends up with a product that spends its energies putting a premium on pulchritude and lacks any suitable involvement of desire. Few directors understood this as early and as well as silent film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst.It's difficult to know if the director understood what he was getting when he espied the young, and undeniably lovely, Louise Brooks and selected her as his lead in Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) - the retelling of Frank Wedekind's "Lulu" plays. Brooks, it turned out, was much much more than just another pretty face.
Her attractiveness - both in terms of physical appearance and sexual magnetism - didn't simply provide a centerpiece for a particular film; it scratched the deeper levels of the medium's potential. Critic Andrew Sarris felt her beauty was evidence of cinema's ability to touch on the universal aspects of the human condition.
"The preeminence of Miss Brooks as the beauty of the twenties indicates the classic nature of the cinema, and its built-in machinery for an appeal to the verdict of history," he wrote.
As a film, Pandora's Box stands in pretty good stead itself. It's a classic of German Expressionism and Pabst brought the full box of tricks to the film Box - exaggerated shadows, angular sets and unsettling camera angles. Yet this isn't as experimental an effort as Pabst's later - and superior - effort, The ThreePenny Opera, but it's also stylistically smoother as a result.
The relatively controlled touch on Pabst part in Pandora's Box makes the influence of the work would have on the film noir that much more obvious. The exaggerated visual style gives the film an allegorical feel that can be interpreted as a universal statement about sexuality or as a historical commentary about a very specific span of German history - the brief "golden period" of the Weimar Republic between the wars.
The devastation of the WWI had left the Germany in ruins but by the mid-1920s the economic policies of the Dawes Plan produced a period of largess in the country and even outright decadence in Berlin. Yet the unsettling reverberations of the Treaty of Versailles and the undergoing social turmoil were evident in the artistic explosion that occurred.
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It is, perhaps, possible to look at the story as an allegory of German institutions destroying themselves chasing after an American strumpet who eventually allows herself to be destroyed by a murdering Brit anyway. Yet Pabst seemed less interested in the social implications of the tale as he was with plumbing the human condition - the female libido in particular. And no actress was more perfect for that particular task than Louise Brooks.
Brooks' legacy as the preeminent beauty of the silent era is usually eclipsed by Greta Garbo who had considerably more commercial success than her American counterpart. But comparing them directly somewhat does a disservice to both. Roland Barthes insisted that Garbo's visage was that of the divine; a Platonic idea of the female form. J. Hoberman countered that Brooks' countenance embodied the "universal object of desire."
For the French film historian, Henri Langlois, it was no contest: "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."
Testimonies to Brooks appeal (like this one) invariably itemize her distinctive look; the trademark bob haircut, the swanlike neck, the dark expressive eyes. Yet, as daunting as her attractiveness may have been, the unexpected radiance of her smile had the power to shatter cynicism about her and cement her already formidable charisma.
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Pandora's Box makes a convincing argument but Pabst stacked the deck in her favor, providing her with a role that closely matched her natural temperament. Although only in her early 20's when the film was made, Brooks had an natural physical grace from her years as a vaudeville dancer and a voracious sexual appetite that lifestyle had fostered. The parallels to Frank Wedekind's Lulu were obvious.
Lulu was featured in the plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box) that recount the young dancer's rise through Berlin society and subsequent downfall. Wedekind described her as "the personification of primitive sexuality, who inspires evil unaware." Not only does her uncontained sexuality brings destruction to the men who try to possess her; it leads her into the murderous arms of a sex maniac (her deepest desire in Brooks' assessment of the character).
In Pabst's film, Lulu is completely defined by her sexual nature but at the same time she is almost completely naive of how her desirability warps the mores of those about her. Which makes sense. A purely hedonistic creature such as Lulu would be invariably focused on her own individual desires. In fact she's almost completely passive beyond them. (And despite her similarity to the character, Brooks herself had none of this same naivete).
It's a trait made clear by Lulus complete inability to pass in front of a mirror without stopping to admire herself. Pabst's affection for mirrors as a visual device in his films was recurrent and he supplied the character with ample opportunities to preen in such a manner. Even at the very end of the film, when she is suffering the afflictions of poverty, Lulu finds a reflective surface to behold herself in.
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It's an assessment of the character that parallels the character of Pandora in mythology. According to Hesiod's Works and Days, Pandora was created as a punishment for mankind. Blessed by many gifts but she is also entrusted with a jar, or box, and warned not to open it. Yet open it she does and the ills of the world, which had not been known until that time, are then loosed upon mankind. Only hope remains in the box she has been entrusted.
The story has similar parallels to the Garden of Eden and how the power of enlightenment also brings and understanding of the evils in the world as well. And both carry a not-so-subtle implication for the act of sex particularly since Pandora's Box can be easily interpreted as symbolic of the womb.
In the Garden of Eden, sex isn't an issue. Love seems to be completely platonic. But the dawning of awareness introduces an understanding of decency with Adam and Eve scrambling to cover their nakedness. Lust and its sordid implications have arrived, along with the pains of childbirth and the agonies of mortality.
Despite the import of Pandora's act (and, possibly, Eve's) and the punishments she incurs, blaming her is misguided, argued Willem Jacob Verdenius.
"There is no reason to think Pandora acted out of malice in opening the jar," he wrote."For she was exercising her curiosity, and when she saw what was let out of it, she quickly closed it."
Similarly, since Lulu acts according to her nature, its difficult to blame her for her actions. Yet, that isn't to say she isn't responsible for the destruction that follows in her wake. Lulu, Brooks noted, possesses an astonishing indifference to the suffering of others. Her abject hedonism implies a powerful selfishness that renders her nigh incapable of sympathy for those around her.
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Every other person in Pandora's Box beholds Lulu and feels the need to possess her. It's not the having her that is so terribly destructive, it's the quest to contain her. Jack is different from them but like Lulu in the sense he is also a creature of passion. The ecstasy is what they each want to possess - not the object that inflames it.
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