Ookie Wookie Nookie

I have an old Hawai'ian song stuck in my head and I don't understand the words (because I don't speak Hawai'ian), so I've been using nonsense. Thus the subject-line.

But that's not what I'm going to write about. ( I'm going to write about misery memoirs. )

Of Sexual Hate and Lonely Death

Gordon Thomas has written a wonderful history, appreciation, and analysis of G.W. Pabst's silent classic, Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora, 1929). Lots of interesting gossip about who slept with whom (or at least who slept with Louise Brooks), too, plus some great lines. About the Wedekind play the movie is based on, Thomas writes, "Lulu, as she murders or degrades all the men in her path, is paradoxically as innocent as the flowers, yet, as she’s framed by Wedekind’s humorless dialog, she seems tough as nails and pretty damn knowing, a whore with a heart of pig-iron."

It's completely spoiler-ridden, so caveat lector. He has a great feel for how the movie means.