The earliest sustained piece of criticism regarding Pandora’s Box was published just seven years after the film was released. The piece was a nine-page chapter in a Russian book on G.W. Pabst authored by Nikolai Efimov (as N.Efimov). The book, titled G. W. Pabst (or Georg Vil’gel’m Pabst), was published in Moscow in 1936 by Iskusstvo. Pages 44 through 53 largely concern Pandora’s Box, though the chapter opens with a short passage on The Loves of Jeanne Ney and concludes with a brief mention of The Diary of a Lost Girl. The chapter in question is titled “Years of Retreat”, which suggests the somewhat unfavorable position the author took toward the left leaning director and those of his films which were more psychological rather than political or sociological studies. I performed a rough Google assisted translation of the chapter, which is pictured below, and could gleam that Efimov had ideological reservations about the film — a film which we know was screened in Moscow (under the Russian titles Lulu and Iashchik Pandory) in the early 1930s. Also shown below are two pages of the film checklist from the back of the book, with the two Pabst films featuring Louise Brooks highlighted.
Within the nine-page chapter, Brooks is mentioned by name and also pictured in a pivotal scene with actor Fritz Kortner. According to my Google assisted translation, Pabst “sought an artist for the central the role of Lulu. This search aroused curiosity in the cinema, and the mailboxes of magazines were filled with letters in which film lovers name their candidates, among them the famous Marlene Dietrich, and he [Pabst] speaks of the beautiful dancer from Budapest, but is still not satisfied. He is going to look for Lulu overseas. When the sensation reaches its apogee and advertising justifies itself, from America they bring out the young maverick, the famous Louise Brooks. The choice of Louise Brooks is indeed fundamental.” In a later passage which discusses the Lulu character, Efimov refrences the actress as having “an open smile and a young, trained body.” Throughout, there is a good deal of describing various incidents from various scenes in the film. [Near the end of the chapter, Brooks is referenced again as having starred in Pabst’s next film, The Diary of a Lost Girl, which the author suggests is likely inferior as it was based on a “sentimental novel”.]
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| pages 44 and 45 | pages 46 and 47 |
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| pages 48 and 49 | pages 50 and 51 |
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| pages 52 and 53 | pages 82 and 83 |
While preparing this page, I came across a remarkable 2015 Ph.D thesis by U.K. film scholar Natalja Poljakowa titled The Distribution, Censorship and Reception of German films in Soviet Russia of the 1920s. It contains a number of passages on Pandora’s Box, G. W. Pabst, as well as Nikolai Efimov’s 1936 book. The thesis makes for interesting reading, as it contains insightful observations as well as a good deal of information about Pandora’s Box which was new to me. I recommend everyone check it out.
According to The Distribution, Censorship and Reception of German films in Soviet Russia of the 1920s, a number of German films were brought the Soviet Union in the late 1920s by Sovkino, a film distributor. Among them was Pabst’s Die Büchse der Pandora. Poljakowa states, “Pabst’s film, however, was purchased incomplete, and appeared on the screens severely re-edited. Moreover, the film received a distribution license only for the Moscow region, as was often the case with films that visualised the life of the western bourgeoisie.” Poljakowa goes on to note that in the early 1930s, German films gradually disappeared from Soviet theaters. “According to the censorship registers, Pabst’s film remained in active distribution until 1932”, which was “unusual for a foreign film” as most had been removed from circulation by that date. Why did Pabst’s films, specifically Pandora’s Box, remain in circulation for as long as it did? Despite the German director’s penchant for Freudianism and bourgeois themes, Poljakowa makes the point that “Pabst’s films were among the most important German productions that were distributed in the Soviet Union … more than any other German director, Pabst was well-known and respected by the Soviet audiences and critics.”
In her thesis, Poljakowa notes how Die Büchse der Pandora was re-edited by Glavrepertkom (a government agency which was part of the Ministry of Education which oversaw censorship) in an attempt to transform the film into “a more conventional ‘circus film’ with elements of a criminal drama – a film type that was familiar to the Soviet audiences.” In the re-edited Russian version, Lulu is described as a “former circus performer”, while erotic scenes and scenes with a sentimental, lyrical or even an entertaining tone were “neutralized” in an attempt to make it “resemble an old-fashioned film, similar to hundreds of other bourgeois melodramas on the Soviet market.” Poljakowa also notes “Having little experience in how to deal with such film, the censorship was unable to remove the ‘Freudian tendencies’ embedded in the plot, for which the film was later blamed in Efimov’s 1930s monograph on Pabst.”
Poljakowa points out how Louise Brooks became briefly popular in the Soviet Union after the release of Die Büchse der Pandora, and that postcards with her portrait were published by Teakinopechat”. (Teakinopechat is the Russian abbreviation for “Teatr i Kino Pechat” which translates to “Theatre and Film Press”.) Despite her brief popularity in the U.S.S.R., “Lulu was banned together with the British-German co-production Moulin Rouge (1928, E.A. Dupont) as bourgeois productions. The censors noted that the Leningrad Inspection of Workers and Peasants expressed their energetic protests against the distribution of both films. The second reason that was declared in the protocol was a ‘changed political situation’.”
Despite the fact I have been researching Pandora’s Box and its worldwide reception for a long time, Natalja Poljakowa’s The Distribution, Censorship and Reception of German films in Soviet Russia of the 1920s proved to be a treasure trove of new and fascinating materiel. [I wish someone would publish it as a book, it certainly deserves to be.] Over the years, here is some of the material I’ve managed to find.
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| Ukrainian magazine article from Jan. 1930 | Soviet postcard, 1928 (not the Teakinopechat issue) |
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| newspaper ad, June 1932 |
newspaper ad, June 1932 |
The newspaper ad on the left, from a Russian-language newspaper, dates from June 1932. The third ad at the bottom is for Lulu, which in Cyrillic is Лулу. (Somehow, I failed to record in my notes which newspaper this ad came from, though it was likely either Izvestia or Pravda. I recall scrolling through each on microfilm years ago.)
The newspaper ad on the right, advertising the same screening, comes from the English-language Moscow Daily Times. Each ad indicates that Lulu is being shown at the Hermitage Garden Movie Theatre, an historic venue which was located in the center of the city. My search through June, 1932 issues of this English-language newspaper didn’t turn up much else except that the film played for two weeks. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any editorial comment except for a listing under “Cinema Program.” Interestingly, though, the advertisements — which ran every day during the film’s two week run — mention neither Die Büchse der Pandora nor G.W. Pabst — only that it was a “German Art Film” “Featuring Louise Brooks.” Each ad featured the same drawing of the actress, along with the notice that there was a “Continual showing from 12 noon. Last performance at 11:45. All tickets for last show at 1 ruble.”
I don’t speak or read Russian, and therefore finding any sort of advertisements or editorial content related to Louise Brooks or Pandora’s Box is especially challenging. However, I came across the above two ads through remarkable happenstance. Back in 2009, I was looking at online newspapers when I noticed an unpromising keyword reference to Louise Brooks in a 1932 newspaper from Billings, Montana. Since 1932 was rather late in the game for a reference to Brooks in an American newspaper, I figured I would check it out, just to see what was there. What I found startled me. It was an article in the Billings Gazette about life in Communist Russia.
As the anonymous August 7th article notes, a few copies of the English-Language Moscow Daily News made their way to the editorial offices of the Billings newspaper, and someone on staff decides to write-up what they found by going through the papers. Among the things they noticed was that “Some of the showhouses have soviet films and talkies but one lists Lulu, a German silent film, featuring Louise Brooks and another a ‘foreign’ production, Moulin Rouge.” That passing reference told me Lulu must have been shown in Moscow sometimes if the preceding few months. I requested a few months of microfilm of the Moscow Daily News and came across the June advertisements. Having specific dates to focus on, I then requested the Russian-language newspaper and unearthed the Russian-language advertisements. (I wonder what ever happened to those re-edited prints of the film?) Here below is the Billings newspaper which led me to my initial finds.
