- A 133-minute version, distributed by Janus Films from Film Museum München, was broadcast in America on the IFC channel in 2006. It has an unidentified orchestral score, including a 2-minute overture at the start, and it listed the credits in German, some of which were translated into English. With German inter-titles and English subtitles. This version was released on a British Region 2 DVD).
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst commented with irony the changes imposed by foreign censors and distributors: "I do not know why someone thought useful to substitute Doctor Schoen's son, Alva Schoen, by an assistant, mark Heding; or why Frank Wedekind the play-writer who is not exactly unknown in France, was renamed Thoma Wedering. I do not know why Loulou is acquitted in the French version, while she is condemned in mine; or why the so important sequence of Jack the Ripper was cut, which gives the film a ridiculous moralistic end. It is not surprising that the nature of my characters have been completely changed... I would at least hope that one would have shown the film as I have created it, to professionals, so that they could evaluate it. They did not want to do it. So many efforts wasted for nothing. They wield the scissors... When will be rid of this plague?" (Source: Pour Vous, Paris magazine, May 2, 1929, quoted by Adonis Kyrou in "Amour-Erotisme & Cinéma", 1957.)
- Upon its initial release, the film was cut in numerous different ways to suit different countries:
- In France, Alwa was not Schon's son but his secretary - a change which actually had the effect of implying a homosexual relationship between the two men.
- In the United States, the film was released in a heavily censored 90-minute version, with a happy ending. This ending - in which Lulu joins the Salvation Army - was so unconvincing that when the film played in New York, its distributors placed a disclaimer at the beginning, emphasizing that they were not responsible for the censorship forced upon them, and they apologized for what was termed "an added saccharine ending."
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