Regardless of many of her trendy clones, such as Melanie Griffith in Demme’s Something Wild, another Lulu can and will never happen again.



'There were girls in boots standing on corners who offered castigation. Casting agents turned into pimps luring ladies into luxurious apartments in Bavarian neighborhoods. Crooks who set up horse races on Hoppergarten organized orgies for jockeys. The Eldorado night club offered a variety of homosexuals dressed as women. Maly was reserved for lesbians, both the feminine ones and those who wore ties. Even though all of this sounds like an erotic dream of Bob Fosse’s Sally Bowles, it is actually an account of Berlin’s night life written by Pabst’s muse Louise Brooks. In Mel Gordon’s book Voluptious Panic, that describes the erotic history of Weimar Berlin, the author states that at the end of 1920s there appeared a media phenomenon that Germans called Girlkultur, characterized by sexually awakened girls, which actually owed much to the Ziegfield’s model. And it was precisely Brooks who was his erotic quintessential, some sort of a dark object of desire, and also his new femme fatale. Brooks started her career appearing in Broadway magician Ziegfield’s follies, and afterwards tried her luck acting in Howard Hawks’ silent films. But only her transfer to Berlin and collaboration with Pabst on Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl turned her into the ultimate heterosexual and lesbian icon.

Her Lulu was simultaneously noble and manipulative, not very cautious and confused, 'democratic in her feelings and sexually ambivalent', as a critic from 'Voice' once described her. Others described her as a surrealist heroine' (Eisner). Franz Wedekind said she was the 'personification of primitive sexuality that unconsciously inspired evil'. Pabst was overwhelmed by her when he saw her as a circus performer in Hawks’ film A Girl in Every Port. Then he tried to “borrow” her from Paramount, but all was in vain. However, Brooks finally called Berlin and prevented Pabst from hiring the more famous Marlene Dietrich for the role of the legendary Lulu.

Brooks’ erotic dynamics culminated in Pandora’s Box behind the stage when Alwa sees Lulu seducing his father Schon on the dressing room floor (in the French softer remake of this film, Alwa is Schon’s secretary). Lulu is ready for anything, even to offer herself to Jack the Ripper with a smile on her face. Pandora’s Box is also sort of a ‘Chinese box’. Thus, it remains unclear whether Louise Brooks entered the character of Lulu or Lulu entered the character of Louise Brooks. In the year when we mark the hundredth anniversary of her birth (Cherryvale, Kansas, 1906), she remains a mystery that we ponder about rather in complete silence than with orchestral accompaniment. One thing is certain though, regardless of many of her trendy clones, such as Melanie Griffith in Demme’s Something Wild, another Lulu can and will not happen ever again. (Dragan Rubeša)