Monday, July 12, 2010
Film / Sex Pandora's Box: Hellooo, Louise Brooks
Posted by Tom McCormack on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:29 PM
Instead of three acts, in Box we get seven, each one containing some bizarre twist of fate, a total reversal of fortune for Lulu. She is married, accidentally kills her husband, is convicted of manslaughter, escapes, runs away with her ex-husband’s son, is blackmailed, stays at some bizarre illegal gambling den, is blackmailed more, is sold to an Egyptian brothel, escapes, and, finally, is murdered by Jack the Ripper!
Even aside from Brooks’s indescribable screen presence, on the basis of cinematography alone Box stands out as a masterpiece of Weimar cinema. Light is ultra-directional, emanating from strange places and throwing the characters into sharp relief. Everything glows in that strange way that only old B&W nitrate film can glow. Brooks’s face is particularly prone to seeming like a light source as opposed to a mere reflector of light.
As the story of a free spirit not prone to self-reflection doomed by a society unaccommodating regarding liberty, Box is, almost to a T, a doppelganger of Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie. In fact, given that Godard nabbed Lulu’s haircut for Karina in that film, and named the character Nana, I would bet that it’s the unacknowledged source. (Although Nana is also a reference to Zola; leave it to Godard to get two references with one name.) Actually, with its lesbian subplot and unflinching view of the hypocrisies of patriarchy, one could make the argument that Box is more progressive than Godard’s work.
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