It sounds strange to label anything with Ernst Lubitsch's named attached as "obscure" or "forgotten," but how often are his silent films or musicals wheeled out when paying tribute to his artistry? More often than not, it's the big guns with stars like James Stewart, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo, and Gary Cooper behaving in dizzy, romantic, gloriously improbable ways that get the cinematheque treatment. This is not to discount those films, many of which are among my most cherished and favorites to revisit, but merely an observation of where the bulk of critical appreciation resides.
Working primarily with Maurice Chevalier and/or Jeanette MacDonald, often together, these four films present a transcontinental romantic world of libertine sexuality, idle luxury, and tart barbs. Lubitsch and company seemed tailored made for the Pre-Code era, a more permissive and progressive era of filmmaking before the religious right (then exemplified by the Catholic Legion of Decency) pulled the plug and made everyone cover up. But their knowing winks and suggestive flirtations endure.
Before we discuss these films, we must first discuss their director and his infamous “touch.” Lubitsch was already a well-respected director in his native Germany when Mary Pickford, one of American cinema’s greatest architects and yet somehow still undervalued among modern cinephiles, contracted him to direct 1923’s Rosita. Director and star clashed during production, but its critical and commercial success meant that Lubitsch was a hot property and a free agent. He made a string of stylish but modestly profitable films for Warner Brothers, then made films for MGM and Paramount. 1928’s The Patriot earned him his first Oscar nomination, a film with the distinction of being the sole Academy Award nominee of which no complete print exists.
But what was immediately apparent in all of these films is that Lubitsch’s artistic point-of-view was adaptable to any era, any setting, any genre. His “touch,” as it were, was a pronounced and noticeable thing that demarcated his films from his peer groups. But what exactly is the “Lubitsch touch”?
The best explanation I have ever seen of it comes from
biographer Scott Eyman in his book, Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise:
With few exceptions Lubitsch's movies take place neither in Europe nor America but in Lubitschland, a place of metaphor, benign grace, rueful wisdom... What came to preoccupy this anomalous artist was the comedy of manners and the society in which it transpired, a world of delicate sangfroid, where a breach of sexual or social propriety and the appropriate response are ritualized, but in unexpected ways, where the basest things are discussed in elegant whispers; of the rapier, never the broadsword... To the unsophisticated eye, Lubitsch's work can appear dated, simply because his characters belong to a world of formal sexual protocol. But his approach to film, to comedy, and to life was not so much ahead of its time as it was singular, and totally out of any time.
The Love Parade plays out like the musical’s form and language was already well-established at this point in cinematic history. And boy, is it ever a horny one. Much of the first hour finds various characters peeping through keyholes and windows waiting to see if the two main characters are going to fuck yet. In essence, Lubitsch puts them as either the audience surrogates or is commenting upon the general voyeuristic nature of watching the movies, perhaps both.
The promise and idea of sex lingers over the first hour, definitely the stronger part of the film, before the eventual wedding night evaporates it entirely. Then the film turns into a gender dynamic that both feels endemic to its era and unwieldly current as a whole subgroup of “trad wives” infect social media. But I think I am getting ahead of myself here.
We open with a scene of another love affair involving Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier) coming to an end. This time it was the ambassador’s wife and the whole thing has caused a potentially thorny political issue and he is ordered to return to the kingdom of Sylvania for reprimanding by the queen (Jeanette MacDonald). Like Fred Astaire to come, Chevalier’s screen legend as an object of romantic attraction is one seemingly based on the whims of the script and not anything projected by the star. Chevalier seems both asexual and like a randy caricature at the same time.
To say that a little of Chevalier’s French bullfrog singing and performing style goes a long way for me is an understatement. Rouben Mamoulian could not quite pull off selling him as someone whose boastful songs about the fairer sex in Love Me Tonight rang true, but Lubitsch nearly manages to sell it by tapping into MacDonald’s carnal energy. Their flirtations, including a duet where he promises to do anything to please the queen, make the near vulgarity of the first hour into the sophisticated slipping it past the censors’ stuff of Lubitsch’s best work.
MacDonald’s penchant for flashing her legs to her horny old men advisors and way with an innuendo practically define the term “saucy” as used to describe Pre-Code women. It moves at a brisk pace and is genuinely charming until everything after these two get hitched. You see, Sylvanian law decrees that no man shall be the equal of the queen and Chevalier does not take lightly or kindly to being made bitch. So, the final 49 minutes or so finds MacDonald being routinely brought down from her pedestal in ways that would make a modern Republican politician pop a bone.
The film’s sexual politics go from champagne bubbles and the promise of sex to “the ol’ battle axe” and “someone take my wife, please” with an alacrity that makes your neck spin around like an owl. The second half of The Love Parade becomes nearly interminable except for the broadly comic interludes of Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth (yes, THAT Lillian Roth). A tightening up of this back half would have salvaged things.
Yet The Love Parade remains worth a viewing because even at this early point in sound cinema, Lubitsch is already displaying a mastery of the new technology that leaves its stagnant and tinny peers feeling a century older than they are. It is also worth watching as it jettisons the earliest movie musical’s revue structure for a plot that builds its songs into the narrative like a Broadway show. It is not quite ‘there’ as the songs are largely forgettable, but it feels fresher and more alive in spots than The Broadway Melody, another 1929 musical.
And I will admit to finding the scene of Chevalier feeling sexually inadequate while trying to perform as 400 cannonballs are shot off hilarious. It is much funnier than the ode to his penis late in the film, “But Nobody’s Using It Now.” Like I said, this musical is horny.
MacDonald tries valiantly to salvage what she can, and generally walks away unscathed and still saucy. A scene where she claims a headache and offers a chorus of “no’s” that slowly turn increasingly sensual is a marvel from her. It is just that both Allister and Buchanan are so aggressively posh British caricatures that they come across as lisping and effeminate queens that make me look positively butch in comparison. Without a good or believable sparring partner, MacDonald is sunk with a plot that quickly becomes tedious. Oh, Nelson Eddy, where for art thou?
1931’s The Smiling Lieutenant reunites Lubitsch and Chevalier in a film that is a substantial leap forward from the previous two. It also features Lubitsch’s first pairing with two of the era’s best, most exciting actresses: Miriam Hopkins and Claudette Colbert. What is interesting is how much of a study in contrasts they are at this juncture of their careers, but we shall circle back to that later.
The plot boils down to a love triangle and a question who will “win” in the end. It is not who you think it might be or gone about in the way you think it would. Why this one exists in the shadow of The Love Parade is a mystery to me as it is overall a stronger, more complex, and thornier work.
Chevalier does his routine lothario bullfrog routine and finds himself fancying Colbert’s all-girl band leader and violinist but helpless to the romantic machinations of Hopkins’ repressed princess. Colbert feels right at home in this slightly naughty, proto-screwball heroine, but looks fleshier and less sophisticated than she would in just a few years. She’d look more like her typical persona by the next year’s The Sign of the Cross and then cement her image permanently in her run of beloved 1934 films (It Happened One Night, Cleopatra, Imitation of Life). But Lubitsch gets those first sparks of her musical-like comedic line deliveries and European chic going here.
What is interesting is how Hopkins must traverse her dowdy, inexperienced princess to worldly and confident queen of the bedroom. She does this with help from Colbert in a sequence where implores Hopkins to “jazz up” her lingerie. She goes from bloomers and oversized garments to frilly lingerie, gowns that appear poured over her body, and takes up smoking with a languor that promises earthly delights. The good girl needed to go bad to make her husband take notice. And she seems to be enjoying the journey every step of the way.
Lubitsch and Hopkins started a run of great roles and films here. They would follow this up with Design for Living which has Hopkins in another menage a trois, this time with prime beef Gary Cooper and Fredric March. Instead of picking one over the other, Hopkins decides to simply have a relationship with both. Then came the unimpeachable classic, Trouble in Paradise, where her jewel thief in that acidic comedy remains perhaps the finest performance of her career. The coming Hays Code would cause Hopkins to drop from leading lady to scenery-chewing supporting actress, as if her sexual knowing and way with a double entendre needed to be put on ice.
It turns out that Chevalier is perfectly fine to me as a garnish but not the main dish. He is part of the central trio, and at times completely concedes the film to the two ladies. But here he seems to understand that Lubitsch’s touch is often bittersweet. Something that Colbert already appears to grasp as she leaves the narrative after transforming the wife’s entire demeanor with a resigned, “it was lovely while it lasted.”
The whole film plays like an inverse, or maybe a remix, of The Love Parade’s various pieces but without the truly distressing sexual politics. Or, at least, ones that feels more permissive and looser than that one’s strictness and heteronormative ideals. It also represents a technical leap from that earlier film in how it manages to even more fully integrate sound and movement than that first foray into the genre.
While it is not quite a masterpiece, it is so close, it does represent a huge growth and pointed the way towards further Pre-Code masterpieces to come from Lubitsch. It is undeniably an accomplished film and one that deserves a better reputation than it currently has. I would argue that it deserves the huzzahs that The Love Parade currently receives.
The drama did not stop there. After production had wrapped, both directors insisted on receiving sole credit for the film. It got so heated that litigation was required and it was eventually decided that Lubitsch would receive a “directed by” credit with “assistance from” for Cukor. This could also explain why some of the performances feel so different from the previously Lubitsch films.
Cukor was a director known for getting career-best work from his actors, especially his female leads. But saying Cukor was exclusively an actress’s director does disservice to the likes of Ronald Colman, Spencer Tracy, Jack Lemmon, Cary Grant, James Stewart, James Mason, and Charles Boyer who did some of their best, lasting work in his films. It is most notable in the fact that Chevalier operates less in his Pepé Le Pew mode here and MacDonald gives a more emotional vibrant performance here than in previous collaborations.
The story also has a brisker pace, which is befitting the borderline raunchy story. One Hour with You seems to argue that a little infidelity can do a marriage good. Here Chevalier is a monogamous and happily married doctor to MacDonald’s socialite. In breezes their friends, the unhappily married Roland Young and Genevieve Tobin. Tobin’s sets her sights on seducing Chevalier away from her best girlfriend while Chevalier’s good friend Charles Ruggles wants to steal MacDonald away from him.
The bones are all there for a grand ol’ time, but the semi-operetta quality of the film never quite takes off. One could easily remove all the musical numbers, change them to dialogue, and lose nothing in the process. And the insistence on having Chevalier break the fourth wall to address the audience just reminds me of how much charm is required to pull something like that off but is entirely absent here. It does not help that Chevalier does some weird baby-talk at times in-between his “ho ho ho” vocal tics.
MacDonald and Tobin completely outclass their male counterparts throughout so the sexual congress and bed swapping never feels as entirely carefree and/or fraught as it should. What exactly about Chevalier draws in Tobin? Is it just the forbidden fruit quality? We can clearly see and understand just what about her character is so enticing and why an hour with her would seem incredibly tempting.
Still, it is an overall delightful and funny experience. A modest stepdown from The Smiling Lieutenant and about on par with The Love Parade. Lubitsch would follow this up with two of his most liberated, complicated, and engrossing movies about the complications of romantic triangles and sex, Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living.
What emerges from this is watching a masterful director transition between continents, technology, and styles with ease. Lubitsch was one of the few European imports to maneuver the various changes in the industry that found the likes of Erich von Stroheim and Victor Sjöström discarded as tastes and advancements changed.
While the Academy was never smart enough to outright award him, they were smart enough to give him an Honorary Academy Award in March 1947. While presenting the award, director Mervyn LeRoy dubbed him “a master of innuendo” and went on to say, “he had an adult mind and a hatred of saying things the obvious way.” As smart an assessment of the man as any I could make. In one of those ghoulish twists that sometimes happens when that awards body finally gives a stellar individual their due, Lubitsch died later that year of a heart attack.
His style and artistry remain and endure. After all, upon the event of his funeral directors William Wyler and Billy Wilder were said to have a famous back-and-forth about him. Wyler is reported to have said, “no more Lubitsch,” to which Wilder replied, “worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.” It is the kind of verbal banter that wouldn’t have been out-of-place in one of his films. If these titans of the industry in their own right revered and honored the man and his work, then it says something about their merit.
This set of four films is a nice primer to start if you
have never seen his work. Then move on to the other Lubitsch films in the
Criterion Collection: Design for Living, Trouble in Paradise, To
Be or Not to Be, Heaven Can Wait, and Cluny Brown. Each and
every single one of them a perfect jewel of a film.
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