DIE BÜCHSE DER PANDORA
(G. W. Pabst, Germany 1929, 133 min., 35mm)

Louise Brooks plays Lulu, heroine of Frank Wedekind’s beloved German plays. An innocently immoral sexual predator, Lulu discards and destroys men as she tries to get ahead . . . until she meets Jack the Ripper. After a series of nondescript flapper films, the American Brooks abandoned Hollywood in favor of artistically richer Europe and emerged a screen icon who outraged censors with her frank behavior. As part of a celebration of the centennial of Louise Brooks’s birth, we present her in the performance recognized as one of the finest in all of cinema. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.