An American dancer arrived in Berlin and became the face of an Austrian director’s obsession, playing a woman whose bob haircut would outlast every man who desired her.

PANDORA’S BOX (1929) stars Louise Brooks as Lulu, a woman who drifts through the world on raw sexual magnetism, unaware of the destruction it leaves behind. Men fall for her, ruin themselves over her, and die because of her. She simply exists, and the world rearranges itself around her appetite.

The film is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind, Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora. G.W. Pabst cast Brooks after seeing her in Howard Hawks’ A Girl in Every Port, deciding on the spot that she was Lulu.

Pabst directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Ladislaus Vajda. Fritz Kortner plays Dr. Ludwig Schön, the newspaper publisher whose obsession with Lulu destroys his engagement, his reputation, and finally himself. Kortner refused to speak to Brooks on set. She later said the entire cast thought she had cast some kind of spell over Pabst.

Francis Lederer plays Schön’s son Alwa, who follows Lulu into her decline, and Alice Roberts plays Countess Geschwitz, one of cinema’s earliest openly lesbian characters. Günther Krampf shot it.

The film follows Lulu from the heights of Berlin society down through scandal, trial, and poverty, ending in London’s fog with a stranger named Jack, played by Gustav Diessl.

Brooks’s performance, stripped of theatrical gesture, baffled contemporary German critics. The film was barely seen for decades before its reputation was restored, and by then the bob had become immortal.