Pandora's Box (1929, Ger.) (aka Die Büchse Der Pandora)

In director G.W. Pabst's classic silent film melodrama - an early erotic and hypnotic silent film melodrama that produced hateful critical reviews for its overt sexuality, and was heavily edited/censored:

• the main character - the insatiable, free-spirited, 18 year-old cabaret chorus girl and femme fatale Lulu (Louise Brooks), a tempting goddess wearing silky dresses and billowy gowns, even though she sported a black bob (pageboy) haircut
• the early instance in which Lulu, the mistress of obsessed and spell-bound patron Dr. Schon (Fritz Kortner) - a wealthy newspaper owner, was caught in compromising position with men; Schon found her socializing in her apartment with another man: Schigolch (Carl Goetz) (either Lulu's pimp or father?) in her apartment; soon after, Lulu also took an interest in Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig), a trapeze circus performer (and future blackmailer)
• the sequence of Lulu hired to perform as a dancrr in a musical revue production by Schon's own son Alwa (Franz Lederer), with whom Lulu also had an affection

With Dr. Schon	With Dr. Schon's Son Alwa	Schon's Fiancee Charlotte

• the scene of femme fatale Lulu caught backstage on opening night in a wardrobe room scandalously kissing Dr. Schon by his more socially-acceptable fiancee Charlotte Marie Adelaide von Zarnikow (Daisy d'Ora) and by Alwa

Scandal: Lulu Caught Kissing Dr. Schon Backstage

• after forced to break off his engagement to Charlotte, the scene of Dr. Schon's subsequent wedding party in which his virginally white-dressed (inappropriately), bi-sexual and amoral bride Lulu engaged in an intimate, flirtatious dance-waltz with black silken-dressed, chic lesbian aristocrat Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) - it was notable as being the first film to present a well-developed lesbian character
• the dramatic scene in which bridegroom Dr. Schon became enraged with jealousy at his fiancee Lulu for her starry-eyed flirtations with Alwa (who professed: "I can't live without you any longer"), and also for her playful flirtations with Schigolch (revealed as her father) and Quast in the bedchamber; Schon thrust a gun at her, and commanded her to shoot herself: "Take it! Kill yourself!...so that you don't drive me to murder as well" - and the moment of Schon's accidental murder during a struggle for the gun between them and the gun discharged
• the trial scene in which the prosecutor accused the hedonistic Lulu (wearing a black veil) of being like a Pandora's box of evil ("The Greek gods created a woman: Pandora. She was beautiful, charming, versed in the art of flattery...But the gods also gave her a box containing the evils of the world. The heedless woman opened the box and the evils were loosed upon us"); she was charged with manslaughter; ultimately, she would be punished for unleashing Pandora's box of evil

Threatened and Ultimately Knifed by Jack the Ripper

• the expressionistic finale on Christmas Eve as destitute prostitute Lulu became another gleaming-knifed victim of Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl); she ended up dying at the hands of the Ripper in London's squalid Soho when he glanced at the knife on a nearby table and couldn't control his homicidal impulses; during an erotic embrace and kiss, he grabbed the knife and stuck the sharp and gleaming knifeblade into her back (off-screen) (her hand grasping him went limp to indicate her death); meanwhile outside, the Salvation Army paraded through the fog