Of all those to make the transition from silent to talking pictures, none did it with more elegance and erudition thanErnst Lubitsch. Indeed, you would need top 10s covering the periods 1914-28 and 1929-48 to do full justice to his achievement and include such items as the mockingly satiricalAnna Boleyn(1920), the deceptively incisiveLady Windermere’s Fan(1926), the scandalously underrated Broken Lullaby (1932) and the knowingly quirkyCluny Brown(1946).
Arriving in Hollywood from Berlin in 1922 having helped revitalise German cinema after the Great War, Lubitsch became a studio insider who refused to abide by the rules. On presenting him with an honorary Academy Award in 1947, fellow director Mervyn LeRoy commended this “master of innuendo” on his “adult mind and a hatred of saying things the obviousway”.
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Billy Wilder had a sign in his office that read: “How would Lubitsch do it?” But there was much more to this enduringly influential filmmaker than the fabled ‘Lubitschtouch’.
Madame DuBarry(1919)
Having initially specialised in comedies with a Jewish slapstick flavour, Lubitsch became “the great humaniser of history” withMadame DuBarryand Anna Boleyn. Designed to raise Weimar spirits by poking fun at the victors of the Great War, these were less historical recreations than costumesatires.
Pola Negri’s Jeanne is an 18th-century it girl, who inflames the passions of Louis XV (Emil Jannings) and shocks stuffy courtiers and prudish peasants alike with her appetite for pleasure. Released the same year as his dark fableThe Dolland the capitalist critiqueThe Oyster Princess, this saucy saga fuelled the conviction that Lubitsch was “the Griffith ofEurope”.
The Marriage Circle(1924)
When his much-vaunted Hollywood partnership with actorMary Pickfordended afterRosita(1923), Lubitsch decamped to Warners. Taking cues from Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), withThe Marriage Circlehe gazumped Cecil B. DeMille and Erich von Stroheim as Hollywood’s leading purveyor of pictures lampooning the bourgeoisie, particularly their preoccupation with sex andstatus.
Adapted fromLothar Schmidt’s play Only a Dream, this comedy of marital errors centres on the misapprehensions of three doctors and two wives. Lubitsch slows the farce to allow the characters to betray their emotions with the slightest expressions and gestures. Enamoured with the material, he revisited it inOne Hour with You(1932).
So This Is Paris(1926)
Having refined his celebrated ‘touch’ inForbidden Paradise(1924) andKiss Me Again(1925), Lubitsch opted for a little optical exuberance in this exquisite marriage comedy. He had previously filmed Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s play Reveillon asThe Merry Jailin 1917. ButSo This Is Parisexpands the narrative to explore the temptations facing doctorMonte Blue, his daydreaming wifePatsy Ruth Millerand their dance-teamneighbours.
Lubitsch litters the action with Freudian gags, but his masterstroke is the Artists Ball sequence, in which he employs superimposition and kaleidoscopic effects to convey the intoxicated exhilaration of therevellers.
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg(1927)
Having acted in a 1915 take on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s novel, Karl Heinrich,Erich von Stroheimwas slated to direct this lavishMGM adaptationas a follow-up toThe Merry Widow(1925). However, production chiefIrving Thalbergneeded a project for the newly arrived Lubitsch and felt he would take better care of fiancéeNorma Sheareras Kathi thebarmaid.
In fact, Lubitsch fell out with Shearer and co-starRamon Novarrowhile producing this most musical of silents. But, keeping his camera moving and making evocative use of the symbol-strewn sets, he slipped between intimate details and rousing set-pieces with peerless insight, wit andgrace.
The Love Parade(1929)
Fresh from earning his first Oscar nomination withThe Patriot(1928) and experimenting with synchronous sound onEternal Love(1929), Lubitsch transformed the nascent screen musical with this inspired Ruritanian romance. Blending operetta and revue,The Love ParadehasVictor SchertzingerandClifford Grey’s songs emerging organically from the storyline, allowingJeanette MacDonald’s dutiful queen andMaurice Chevalier’s playboy consort to express their emotions through thelyrics.
Jean Cocteau dubbed it “a Lubitsch miracle”, and the director would continue to impart his audiovisual magic on the genre inMonte Carlo(1930),The Smiling Lieutenant(1931), One Hour with You (1932) and The Merry Widow(1934).
Trouble in Paradise(1932)
Owing more to the escapades of notorious Romanian swindler Georges Manolescu thanLászló Aladár’s source play The Honest Finder, thisscrewball masterclassis the embodiment of the ‘Lubitsch touch’.Samson Raphaelson’s dialogue crackles with cynical wit, as thievesHerbert MarshallandMiriam Hopkinscircle wealthy victimKay Francis. But it’s the tension between what is heard and seen that makes this so innovatively engrossing, as Lubitsch concocts sophisticatedly subversive gags with garbage-collecting gondolas, neon signs, opera scores and silhouettes onbedspreads.
Yet, for all the urbanity of the performances and the elegance of the art deco sets, this is a Depression-era class study about escaping the ranks of the ‘nouveaupoor’.
Ninotchka(1939)
The increased censorship of Hollywood’s Production Code together with a new management role at Paramount temporarily sapped Lubitsch’s creative energy in the mid-1930s. Nevertheless, he still managed to produce such gems asDesign for Living(1933),Angel(1937) andBluebeard’s Eighth Wife(1938) before returning to peak form with this acute blend ofromantic comedyand political satire, which was promoted with the iconic tagline, “GarboLaughs!”
Inheriting the project fromGeorge Cukor, Lubitsch foundGreta Garboa difficult collaborator, and she considered him vulgar. Yet, he found a coquettish charm beneath her trademark impassivity that made her severe Soviet commissar’s discovery of pleasure on falling for a French aristocrat all the morebeguiling.
The Shop Around the Corner(1940)
Echoing the nostalgic yearning for his tailor father’s Berlin shop that had informed his directorial breakthrough,Schuhpalast Pinkus(1916), this disarmingly deep and darkreworkingof Miklós László’s play Parfumerie was also influenced by Lubitsch’s cuckolding by actor and screenwriter Hanns Kräly, as well as his desire for Europe to return to its pre-war statusquo.
So while the epistolary romance between humble clerksJames StewartandMargaret Sullavantakes centre stage, Lubitsch is more interested in the ambience of Matuschek & Company, the Budapest leather goods store created on a Hollywood backlot by MGM art directorCedric Gibbons. The setting enabled Lubitsch to discuss the contentious themes of class and community within the confines of a romanticcomedy.
To Be or Not to Be(1942)
Has there been a more potent piece of cinematic revenge than this riposte to images of Lubitsch being used in the invidious propaganda film, The Eternal Jew (1940)? Indeed, he even slips a snippet of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) into this treatise on masquerade andresistance.
Centring on the capers of a Warsaw theatre company trapped between freedom fighters and the Gestapo,To Be or Not to Be’s story is so gleefully convoluted that François Truffaut claimed it was impossible to follow. Contemporary critics were shocked by the brazen humour, but they overlooked the fact that Lubitsch was also exposing the Hollywood conventions that prevented him from depicting the realities facing occupiedEurope.
Heaven Can Wait(1943)
As the war gave Hollywood comedy a sharper edge, Lubitsch joined 20th Century-Fox and embraced Technicolor Americana in this biopic of a nobody, which epitomises the non-judgemental optimism of hiswork.
In some ways,Heaven Can Waitcan be seen as a reproach to US isolationism, as Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) reflects on seven decades of oblivious miscreancy from the reception hall of hell. But, in reworkingLászló Bús-Fekete’s play Birthdays, the ailing Lubitsch uses this flashbacking chronicle of “a man only interested in good living with no aim of accomplishing anything or doing anything noble” to lament the transience ofexistence.
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