Director: G. W. Pabst
Screenplay: G. W. Pabst and Landislaus Vajda, based on the plays Erdgeist and Pandora's Box by Frank Wedekind
Starring: Louise Brooks, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz, Alice Roberts
Running Time: 136 minutes (also 100 minutes and 152 minutes)
Genre: Drama
Lulu (Brooks) is a dancer, whose uninhibited sensuality provokes obsession and violence in the men around her, leading them to ruin and death.
This is a classic German silent film with a story that moves from Berlin to Paris to London, and takes in gambling, show-business, lesbianism, prostitution and Jack the Ripper. At the time it was made it was hugely controversial and very heavily cut and re-edited for some markets. Visually the film is very stylish, made at the tail-end of the German Expressionism movement, this has touches of the surreal, stylised look of Expressionism but blends it with gritty realism in the scenes set in the London slums. The film hangs on the iconic image of Louise Brooks as Lulu, many films take advantage of the beauty of their lead actress, but rarely as successfully as this. Blending knowingness, with naivete, and sensuality with innocence, she gives a luminous performance. However, she is seen largely through the eyes of the men in her life, all of whom exploit her in their own ways, and the film sees her as responsible for all of the evils that befall them, rather than the men being held accountable for their own choices.
Louise Brooks became kind of a fashion icon following the success of the film (her distinctive bob haircut is still referred to as a "Lulu"), however the movie quickly fell into obscurity but was rediscovered in the 1950s whereupon it was declared a masterpiece. It is an important and striking film, and a must-see for fans of silent cinema.
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