The BFI London Film Festival has announced the line-up for its October event, and among the highlights is a new restoration of Pandora’s Box, the German silent film which transformed its American star, Louise Brooks, into an international movie icon.
Pandora’s Box is set to screen on October 14th at 6pm at the National Film Theater 1 in London. The new restoration is listed at 143 minutes, ten minutes longer than a “restored version” released by Criterion on DVD in 2008.
As restorer Martin Koerber, film curator at Berlin's Deutsche Kinemathek, explains on the BFI website, Pandora's Box was not a success when it premiered in Berlin on February 9, 1929. It only became famous with the re-emergence of its star in the 1960s through the efforts of ardent admirers such as Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and James Card of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.
The film’s battle with censors and fatal period of neglect is why, perhaps, no negative or original print of the film survives - only inferior dupes full of technical imperfections, including lack of focus and missing frames and scenes. Koerber’s brand-new version, thanks to the application of digital tools, restores the film to near its original conception, and allows viewers to experience afresh the tragic enchantments of the beautiful but guileless Lulu. Her tragic death, coincidently, takes place on the streets of London at the hands of Jack the Ripper.
The Festival, run by the British Film Institute, is in its 54th year. It will include 197 feature films, and 112 shorts. Other restorations are also on the calendar.
Among them will be the world premiere of The Great White Silence, which is composed of footage shot on Captain Scott's deadly expedition to the South Pole between 1910 and 1913. It will be shown with a live musical accompaniment based on a newly composed score.
That film is part of “Treasures from the Archive,” older films which have been newly restored. Other offerings include David Lean's epic The Bridge on the River Kwai and the G.W. Pabst masterpiece, Pandora’s Box.
Among the contemporary films set to show at the London Film Festival are Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman. The diminutive star, who got her start sporting a Brooks bob in The Professional, is expected to attend the Festival.
[The October 14th screening of Pandora’s Box is not the only screening of a Brooks film set to take place in Great Britain. Last week, Bristol Silents in Bristol announced they will show the other film Brooks made in Germany with G.W. Pabst, The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). It is set to show October 29th at 6:30 pm.]
More info: The London Film Festival is set to run October 13th through the 28th. A complete line-up of films along with ticket availability can be found at http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/
Thomas Gladysz is a longtime fan of Louise Brooks, so much so that in 1995 he founded the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and fan club devoted to the silent film star. Gladysz has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television, and introduced her films around the country. Recently, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.
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