I finally had the chance to see Pandora's Box last week and it is just by far one of the most amazing movies ever. Of course I enjoy any movie plot that lets me use the words "prostitute, pimp, lesbian lover, and Jack the Ripper" (that's how I interpreted it anyways).What was really amazing to me was the contrast between the traditional vamp and this final gasp of vamp. Many claim the vamp never died, she just morphed into the flapper and later the femme fatale. To a point that may be true but the pure vamp existed right up the late silent generation...Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, and Greta Garbo could all receive the vamp stamp to some degree. However the first two are usually considered flappers.
Yes there was a difference. I wrote this article on Perpetual Flapper about the evolution of the vamp into the flapper. To summarize the vamp entered pop culture through film in 1914 with Theda Bara's "A Fool There Was". She evolved into the Baby Vamp through Olive Thomas who would play cute little girls that had vampy ways. The Baby Vamp evolved through Olive into the flapper with her 1920 film "The Flapper". Pure vamping lived on through Nita Naldi and the like, but Pandora's Box is one of the first late silents I've seen where it seems the Vamp and the Flapper finally collide...probably to make the femme fatale. Through this collision and evolution we can see not only changing pop culture tastes, but the change towards sexuality and women's roles in society as well.
In 1914 swimsuits that resembled burkas were scandalous. Outfits covered legs and usually arms, a hint of ankle was what a hint of cleavage is now. Good women were expected to keep home (or watch the servants, whatever), raise the kids, and be all proper. Sexuality did not figure in this equation anywhere. As Eve Golden explores in her wonderful Theda Bara biography, not only were women not supposed to be sexual, men weren't either! Sex was seen as draining their 'essence', their life form, to certain schools of thought at the time. Thus a sexually available woman was not only scandalous...she was DANGEROUS!
A Fool There Was had been a popular play before it reached the screen. Theda's character is literally called a "Vampire" which eventually shortened into vamp. The first time she meets her new victim she drops her rose, which he goes to retrieve for her. When he does so she lifts her hem, showing her ankle. The film is extremely tame by our standards, kisses aren't even shown (hints of them are, just not the real thing)! But through the film the message of what a vamp is, is quite clear: shes sexually available and LIKES IT that way, in doing so she destroys the men's she vamps and takes all their money and property and ruins their lives, and in doing so she also destroys the good little families. Theda is basically a more daring version of Marilyn in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes".
The film was a raging hit, and in doing so brought vamping into popular culture. It coincided with a move towards more women's rights (birth control became a little less illegal, women won the vote in 1920, so forth). Everything that is credited to flappers probably more likely started with the vamps.
Olive Thomas entered film in 1916. She did her first baby vamp styled role in 1917 and it became what she was known for. Olive's films made less of a social wave, more so riding the tide than anything. She was the first flapper with the 1920 film of the same name. Unfortunately she also died that year in true wild child fashion at age 25.
By the time flappers and vamps were both running around women continued making more and more waves. Not only were they sexually free but they also found someone to fantasize over: Rudolph Valentino. It started with the tango in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and just escalated with the release of "The Sheik". The Sheik's story reflects women's sexual liberation of the time. In the original novel Lady Diana falls in love with the Sheik BECAUSE he raped her. Not only were women fainting over the idea of a sexually intense and virile man, but they intended to enjoy it as well! The Sheik was probably the final blow to any remaining Victorian morals. The fascination over this and Valentino's early Latin films is extremely evident in other films of the time (every other 1923 film seemed to have a Spanish theme thanks to Blood and Sand) and the sheet music that sold off the shelves. Women were obsessed with the sexual fantasy of Sheik rape, just one more notch in the feminism belt.
In some of Louise's earliest films shes playing vampy over flapper. In 1926's "Love em and Leave em" (her first really major role) she vamps her sister's fiance, and then gets herself into a whole mess of trouble. But by 1928 this new merging seemed to be hinted at. In "A Girl in Every Port" she vamps her lover and his friend, but accidentally. This was a newer development: usually if a vamp was vamping she MEANT to...or used it to her advantage. But by the last few years of the silents, by the time the stock market had crashed, the vamp had lost her edge. Even Greta Garbo's films reflect the same change with 1926's "The Temptress" showing the original vamping, and 1929's "Wild Orchids" showing the accidental trouble plagued vamping (someone literally must die for it!)
Pandora's Box, though not an American film, shows the final death knell to everything that had been. France, England, Japan, and Germany all had their own versions of flappers and in most cases vamps (Musidora predated Theda Bara, Pola Negri came from Polish and German films, so forth). But all went into chaos and all took just about as long as the US to give women rights again (unfortunately where most of these countries continued to grow and accelerate, the US just stopped and then backtracked).
Instead of being like Theda where she enjoyed and owned her sexuality, using it to her advantage, Louise's Lulu has the ability, but no benefits. Shes sexual as can be and men love her, but they're all using her for their own gain. The money she gets off of men using her partly goes to the old drunk Schigolch, who if he isn't a pimp hes definitely not looking out for her interests. She was escorting a man who was engaged to the woman who is the daughter of a newspaper mogul that was in love with Lulu at some point. He has a son Alwa, who is naive and the vamps victim if you will. Lulu seems to really love him, and he doesn't seem to want much of her. She meets another man who is to do an act with her. He's in love with her too and wants to use her to promote his own career.
All these men are madly in love with Lulu but she doesn't seem to have any control over their actions. They try to use her to their advantage and end up destroying themselves mostly by their attempts at control. Lulu marries the mogul, but he seems to kill himself after calling her out on her vamping ways. Its about this point in the movie the thought, "The problem with vamps is men. Men are the ones driving themselves crazy, not this woman" popped into my mind. Lulu is accused of his murder and the other horde of men save her. However after going into hiding they all start trying to use her again...and all either threaten to sell her or turn her in if she does not do their bidding.
Meanwhile Lulu had a female lover Geschwitz. Geschwitz is the only one that tries to save her, and in the end the men all use her too to sneak Lulu away from her troubles. They end up in squalor on Xmas Eve and Lulu leaves for a walk, where she runs into prostitute murderer Jack the Ripper. He says he doesn't have money, she says that's okay hes nice, and he tries to resist the urge to kill her but cant. He kills her the end.
Its almost like the literal merging of vamp and flapper happened in this one film. Everything that was right about the movements culminated with the lesbian love story. But everything that would be lost through the 30s-60s is happening at the same time. Its like the woman is being BLAMED for being seen a sexual, though it doesn't seem at most points that she goes out of her way to do so. All these men drive themselves crazy over her, but she doesn't seem to be actively pursuing it. During the court scene Geschwitz screams to the court that its unfair, that they would be as she had they been raised in 'cabarets as well'. The hint would almost seem to be that Lulu was a victim of abuse or a form of child prostitution though its not elaborated on. The men are the ones causing the chaos and commotion while she does not seem to understand she could have walked away from most of this, though how else she would have lived is unknown.
The worst part is seeing the men manipulate her for their own uses, and when it explodes in their face they blame it on her and her sexuality. The courtroom scene has the prosecutor relating her to Pandora of the Pandora's Box myth. As he put it the woman who naively opened the box because of her 'womanly curiosity' and unleashed all the evils on the world. He was right, but for all the wrong reasons. The myth of Pandora's Box just shows where female rights have gone horribly wrong through many generations. It seems by 1929 the sexually liberated and wise vamp died, and in her place came the misguided and misunderstood femme fatale, the one who was seen as sexual and blamed for it even though she couldn't begin to understand or enjoy it.
Maybe one of the most telling bits of what had changed came in the endings. In A Fool There Was Theda's vamp sucks the last ounce of life from her victim, literally killing him after taking all his wealth and love and driving his family away. She then laughs and throws petals over his body and nothing happens to her...we are to assume she lives on and is just a-okay vamping away.
In the end of Pandora's Box Lulu goes out on Xmas eve, annoyed at how men have been treating her (Pimpy had acquired a bottle of booze but no food). Unaware there is a notice about the prostitute serial killer she spots Jack the Ripper and asks to go home with him. They kiss in the stairwell and hes trying to resist the urge to kill her. He almost does and says he has no money, but she says that's okay she likes him, hes nice...once again not understanding how the men were perceiving her or what they were projecting onto her. He comes up stairs and shes all sweet to him, not trying to take a damn thing from him. She lights the Christmas candle and they kiss, and finally he stabs her. She dies because of how the men perceive her and what they project on her, while all the while she was just seeking something sincere.
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