.alexrossmusic profiles Ernst Lubitsch, whose films were known for their unique blend of cosmopolitan sophistication and winking innuendo—and are known among fellow filmmakers as some of the best ever made.
Lubitsch received his first film-acting credit in 1913, when he was twenty-one, and made his début as a director a year later, in a short titled “Miss Soapsuds.” He achieved considerable popularity playing a certain comic type: a Jewish schlemiel who, despite his vulgarity and klutziness, maneuvers his way up the social ladder. Critics have debated whether these “milieu films,” usually set in the garment business, indulge anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Several other films from Lubitsch’s German period display avant-garde features: surrealist sets, geometrical manipulations of the screen image, self-referential cameos by the director. At the same time, he was devising lavish costume pictures that adroitly mix comedy and drama. In “Madame DuBarry,” aristocratic shenanigans go off with the expected saucy wit; more startling are the helter-skelter scenes of revolution.
In defiance of commercial nostrums, Lubitsch trusted in the intelligence of his audience. The way to win the hearts of moviegoers, he once told Wilder, was not to tell them that two plus two equals four but to let them do the addition themselves. The hat in “Ninotchka” is a case in point: when Garbo puts it on, no one reminds the viewer that she castigated the same hat half an hour earlier.
In the matter of gender relations, the musicals have aged less well. The empowerment of the female gaze in the silent films gives way to a male-dominated perspective, a sacralizing of Chevalier’s roué persona. Characters played by MacDonald and Claudette Colbert are not granted the freedom that Oswalda and Negri earlier enjoyed. McBride argues, in Lubitsch’s defense, that the movies address the “emotional consequences of male abandon.
Gaston is another Lubitsch rake who rethinks his two-timing ways. Marshall, hinting at vulnerability beneath an impeccable veneer, makes the transition more believable than Chevalier ever could. A bittersweet atmosphere infiltrates the relationship between Gaston and Colet, culminating in an almost shockingly expressive series of shots. Colet, embracing Gaston in her bedroom, says, “We have a long time ahead of us, Gaston—weeks, months, years . . .
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