"Louise Brooks's screen presence redefined the proverbial fatality of the femmes"

Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929) owes its iconic status not to its plot – a lurid morality tale – but the subversive sheen of its star. Louise Brooks's screen presence redefined the proverbial fatality of the femmes. Here was no temptress hell-bent on destruction but a girl whose spontaneity and unrepressed sexuality proved too hot to handle for the leering males around her.

The message was much aided by a boyish bob which, in its angular minimalism, posed an affront to cliches of femininity. "The girl in the black helmet", she was called, the gritty hue of her barnet more redolent of the dominatrix's leather boot than the flowing locks of the damsel in distress.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/22/clip-joint-louise-brooks-bob