STORY TELLING AND ADAPTATION

Story Telling and Adaptation

Story Telling and Adaptation

Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904) set a new standard for dramatic representation and was influential in determining the form of contemporary productions as well as later Expressionist Theater. Wedekind's innovative use of language, his themes of sexual expressivity and circus-like sensationalism, and above all his focus on the bourgeois framework of fin de siècle Germany work together in the plays to produce a complex, sometimes ambivalent commentary on W0ilhelmine social reality. In his 1929 film adaptation of the Lulu plays, G.W. Pabst retains many aspects of Wedekind's portrayal but incorporates important modifications as well. Not only is the script a remarkable conflation of the two plays -- retaining the basic storyline while markedly altering the dramatic structure and build-up of the play -- but the film is silent. (Mary Ann Doane, 1990, 65-78)

To compensate for the loss of language, Pabst utilizes a cinematic technique relying on contrastive and ambiguous montage, staging, and composition to produce a symbolic characterization of Weimar society. Most important in this respect is the figure of Lulu; her role, already ambiguous in Wedekind's drama, takes on a new significance in Pabst's film. Constructed by her relations to the men around her but also by the constraints of gender and class, Lulu is in the end negated as perfunctorily as she was formed. The film may lead to a "negation of the feminine"; it most certainly calls the constructs of "masculine" and "feminine" into question, as can be seen in the figure of the Gräfin Geschwitz and in the numerous references to gender-specific behavior and exchangeability throughout the film. Whether Lulu is, in fact, a femme fatale, a "New Woman," or something else entirely, she does mirror the contemporary question of gender construction and societal constraints. As evidenced in the final scene -- the ambivalence underlying not only Lulu's fate, but the character of her killer as well -- Pabst's conceptualization of Lulu is crucially different from that of Wedekind. Certainly the time difference between the drama and film plays a major part in explaining this contrast, but it may be possible, based on the film's self-reflexivity and Lulu's position as the ultimate actress, to seek a "filmic" justification as well. (Mary Ann Doane, 1990, 65-78)

Die Büchse der Pandora is, in most senses of the term, a modern film. Certainly the cinematic techniques used are classical, almost Hollywood-like in their consistency. The narrative is linear, with two fairly large gaps (between the courtroom escape and the gambling boat scene, and then to the hovel in London) but no significant confusion. The continuity, both of narration and montage, is also conventional, with a few interesting deviations. Pabst was known for his supreme ability to create a `seamless' film, achieving continuity by cutting on motion to produce the illusion of an uninterrupted flow between shots. Pandora's Box is no exception: the cutting here is flawless -- at no point might a casual spectator become aware ...