"i have a confession to make to you, baron: you are a CROOK!": the ERNST LUBITSCH poll

Only seen 'The Smiling Lieutenant' & 'One Hour With You', and the latter is SAUCY even for pre-code. Chevalier's vaudeville habit of delivering asides & singing songs directly to the camera now comes off as light years ahead, and the gender relations are just... yeah they just do not make films like this any more

Adolph: You have a right to be wrong. You're a woman. Women are born to be wrong. I like my women... wrong! (seizes her, goes for the kiss)

think i've only seen 'trouble in paradise', 'to be or not to be' & 'ninotchka' -- out of those 'ninotchka' takes it for me easily - the restaurant scene w/ douglas telling the drawn-out joke is aces

'Trouble in Paradise' by a mile. I've seen 'The Smiling Lieutenant', 'Design for Living', 'The Merry Widow', 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife', 'Ninotchka', 'The Shop Around the Corner', and 'To Be or Not to Be', but nothing matches the pacing and humor of 'TiP'.

I think I've seen 14 of these! (plus some of the earlier silents at Film Forum retro a couple years back)

Trouble in Paradise.

to be or not to be is one of my favourite movies ever.

meh i could not really deal with how unlikeable the main character in "Trouble" is and I thought everyone around him behaved v. unrealistically.

SCHULTZ!!!

xpost

Gaston, unlikeable?!

wouldn't have voted for it but missing 'the marriage circle' is some bullshit. it's full-length too (as are most of his silents).

Btw, there's a little inside joke of sorts in 'TiP'. Notice how Lubitsch has Herbert Marshall's character run up and down the stairs so much? It's a double. Marshall lost a leg in WWI.

Come to think of it, I think I did see 'The Marriage Circle'.

oops. i admittedly haven't seen/know little about the silent stuff xp

tbh you'd be mad to vote silent over sound but he was a huge deal in the silent era.

Trouble in Paradise or Shop around the Corner. The first is funnier, the second is beautiful.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

aw i voted "ninotchka" before i remembered that "trouble in paradise" is lubitsch. love them both

I haven't seen all of those movies, of course, but:

#1 Heaven Can Wait
#2 Ninotschka
#3 To Be Or Not To Be
#4 Trouble in Paradise

I can't recall but I think I threw a pity vote to Broken Lullaby aka The Man I Killed. As a serious (and, ok, a bit maudlin) plea for peace, love, and understanding, it's been lost in all the effervescence surrounding it. But it's more sensitively directed than Heaven Can Wait, Ninotchka, or To Be Or Not To Be. And I'd say the same for several of the silents which, right, should have been included.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not a very big turnout. Billy Wilder is somewhere up above crying into his schmaltz at the way you treated his hero.

I missed this one.

The Shop Around the Corner is one of my very, very favorite films, so that would get my vote. But opening sequence of Trouble in Paradise is magic and love Garbo ("The latest trials went well. There are fewer but better Russians.") in Ninotchka

The last third of Heaven Can Wait is pretty moving – people keep disappearing from Don Ameche's life as he gets older – and there's a dance b/w him and Gene Tierney that's Ophuls-esque in its summoning of nostalgia and sadness. But, wow, I don't like Ameche: too starchy and smug. Charles Coburn and Eugene Pallette and the black butler (who looks like wandered in out of a Sturges picture) steal this.

Eugene Pallette should be in every movie.

if he had lived in the CGI era he'd have played a bullfrog at some point.

like HCW a lot, and the Sarris-Haskell chat on the disc.

Eugene Pallette should be in every movie.

Pity he was such a right-wing nut.

i saw 'that uncertain feeling' recently...its premise is fairly cute but as it went on none of the conflict really felt real & it was odd that the leads went so far as to actually get divorced only to inevitably get back together

'ninotchka' was not quite as good as i remembered it. way too slow and soggy after the first hour.

'shop around the corner' is one of the most perfect movies ever.

Saw Die Begkatze ('The Wildcat') at the Goethte Institut last night. It's a 'mountain comedy', i.e. slapstick in the snow starring Pola Negri and it was pretty funny.

I loved you as a crook! I worshipped you as a crook! Please don't be another good for nothing gigolo!

Yeah, that's the best line in that one.

Cluny Brown at Film Forum, New York film nerds. Please check it out: like Holiday, one of the oddest, most beautiful of American films; its tone is unique. Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones, and Peter Lawford are expert.

Also: since it's Christmas time, please rent The Shop Around the Corner.

Really? The calendar says The Conformist. Oh, I see, thanks.

cluny brown is fucking aces

I was watching The Shop Around The Corner last night for maybe the eighty-eighth time. It just gets everything right, it all sticks. Those last ten minutes, especially with that sudden turn toward extreme intimacy at the last moments. are just the most amazing thing. Margaret Sullavan staring at the empty post box - wow.

which ernst lubitsch movie should i watch tonite

2 b or not 2 b

yeah?

You know that great, great Polish actor, Joseph Tura?

He's world famous in Poland!

Trouble In Paradise is playing tomorrow and Monday at the FF with a similarly themed and casted William Dieterle movie called Jewel Robbery.

just saw Design For Living and could not believe it. kept waiting for the morality play, the downer ending, the comeuppance and man Miriam just gets the happiest ending imaginable, this film is from the future

would have voted for this over One Hour With You if I'd known

i watched trouble in paradise with a girl over the holiday break and she squealed joyously through most of it.
kind of a keeper, that one.

If any man I see looks at his watch during Trouble in Paradise I ask him to leave this apartment immediately.

(I've never done this but want to)

seattle peeps Trouble in Paradise is showing at the Grand Illusion this week

Hoberman on the restored '22 Loves of Pharaoh:

http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2012/10/17/live-from-the-kingdom-of-the-dead-lubitsch%E2%80%99s-lavish-1922-%E2%80%9Cloves-of-pharaoh%E2%80%9D/

damn, that looks fascinating

Would love to see it, but don't think I can get there.

Morbs, are you going?

I am in shitty condition today... But I think I saw it at Film Forum in 2003! Never big on Egypt epics, really.

ok, i dont think i did see it.

This thread revive prompted us to watch Trouble in Paradise tonight, which I'd never seen. Total delight.

Unsurprisingly, Cluny Brown was completely brilliant. So many great lines that won't sound that funny written out: "if England must produce more Belinskis, then we shall produce more Belinskis" and everything Betty Cream says to the two young men in the party scene.

We'd watched Emma. (2020) the previous night, which made for an inadvertently well-programmed double bill about class in England (though perhaps inevitably due to their respective sources, the 1946 film is sharper than the 2020), not to mention that Bill Nighy would fit into CB seamlessly.

the HONORABLE Betty Cream, thanks.

Nice to watch Peter Lawford score with a comedic role perfectly in his range.

The dinner scene with the roast beef.

Belinksi bumping into Cluny and Wilson when out walking.

I mean, the staging and body language sez it all:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/aDVTQlr16EHcHHLytRF9DDq5xuxdV93T7c4Pnur0CxCtU1ZHxfjRuj6uTET9VXyyJBwgaZIVy0cfkAcUXUVWlHyVHEzE7Shc_CtDNrTXqluKF_e8dCJ9JVKCL-N6e89a

I know his rep but I don't think I'd previously seen Lawford in anything other than Advise & Consent, so he was a pleasant surprise.

Wilson was almost too effective as the pinched killjoy, spending entire minutes with his demonically mirthless family was a little rough, though I enjoyed the repeated gag of Boyer ringing the bell. Actually, all the recurring gags were good.

Great use of costuming in that still as well!

TCM premiere of So This Is Paris (1926), with a new score by Ben Model, tonight at 8pm EST. Be there or be dead to me.

Just saw Design for Living yesterday and it instantly became one of my all-time favorites. Practically perfect in every way. And with each additional Lubitsch film I see, he rises in the ranks of my all-time favorite directors.

Yes that one's a delight! Who woulda thought straight laced Gary Cooper was up to polyamorous shenanigans back in the day.

If the rumors are true, Cooper had a pretty lively private life.

More interesting to me right now:
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/attachments/three-women-blueband-jpg.117875/

Three Women (1924) is good news by itself, but could "The Ernst Lubitsch Collection" mean more titles from this period--So This Is Paris? Forbidden Paradise?

his bel air estate is up for sale for the first time in over sixty years

https://www.elliman.com/california/sales/detail/512-l-564-81_22166811/268-bel-air-rd-bel-air-los-angeles-ca-90077

would that i had $20 million bcz holy damn

omg how beautiful

Marvelling at that 5 bedroom : 8 bathroom ratio

Her husband is that great, great Polish actor, Joseph Tura. You’ve probably heard of him.

_That Uncertain Feeling_ may be minor Lubitsch, but high marks to Burgess Meredith as an egomaniacal pianist whose idea of kicking off roleplay sex with Merle Oberon is bellowing "I AM WOTAN AND I HAVE COME TO EARTH!"

Keeks!

Dahling, why do you pinch my side and say “keeks”?

Keeks just keep getting harder to find.

For those not allergic to podcasts, this is a fun listen:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-would-lubitsch-do-it/id1656845615

Just noticed that That Uncertain Feeling was made between two of his biggest classics, The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not to Be.

I've hesitated. Merle Oberon and Melvyn Douglas are not my beau ideal of a magical pairing.

it's a light watch

It’s worth seeing, ever if not top-tier Lubitsch as everyone acknowledges. And yeah, the fundamental triangle is flawed, there is more chemistry between Melvyn Douglas and Eve Arden than between him and Merle Oberon and her role in the end is unsympathetic, but her performance and presence are fine. Burgess Meredith character ultimately unlikable but still funny. There’s an amusing little bit by Sig Ruman as Mr. Kafka, the film could have used more of him. Despite all these caveats would watch again.

I think it’s easy to watch too since, if I read correctly, the copyright paperwork was damaged or lost at sea and, because the film was such a flop Lubitsch’s production partner didn’t want to bother to pay the $19.99 to refile so it is in the public domain.

$28.76. In England. Maybe it is actually copyrighted in the US.

I'd have voted for Cluny Brown today without hesitation. Its script, rhythm, Boyer, supporting cast -- perfect.

Watched TROUBLE IN PARADISE the other night. Amazing. I feel like so many facets of this film were light years ahead, the timing and the acting and the writing and quite frequently the camerawork. The theft, the meeting of Gaston and Lily, the bewildered recollection is the theft, Gaston and Lily realizing just who the other really is...that whole opening stretch is A++ (the rest of the film vacillates between A and A+ for me.)

Design For Living is next up.

I just watched both of those for the first time on Criterion. I am now completely smitten with Miriam Hopkins.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/47/73/72/477372e8d0a225cd436a903e65c060ad.gif

Expiring soon, no?

Design for living with young hot fun cooper (instead of stoic, old, Captain America cooper) is pretty amazing

Yep, tomorrow is last day for those two. xp

I watched Design for Living last week for that reason. A delight!

both excellent movies but i preferred design for living, partially because it has significantly more miriam hopkins. surprised it got no votes in this poll though maybe it was less easily accessible at the time?

Probably. Pre-Criterion it was stuck in Universal's budget Gary Cooper Franchise Collection.

If you wanna watch another Miriam Hopkins highlight, stream The Heiress, where she plays Olivia de Havilland's duplicitous aunt, herself in love with Montgomery Clift.

Followed up my Lubitsch double feature with something completely different: Easy Rider, which I had somehow never seen. I still have a contact high.

Uggggh, why won't they just put Design for Living out on Blu-ray already? These gaps in my Lubitsch collection are driving me nuts!

Just recently rewatched one of my favorite Outer Limits episodes and realized for the first time that it featured an unrecognizable Miriam Hopkins in full psychobiddy mode.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/__P1bz4ZkkRA/TUYinnlBZWI/AAAAAAAACp8/z_FJdjSUvUE/s1600/screen-capture-1.png

I'm still not as fond of Design for Living as I should be. I watched it last night and thought it needed to pick up the tempo. But! Daaaaamn, Coop is hot -- no wonder Fredric March can't stop ogling him.

Design for Living is on Criterion blu ray

Sorry, I meant Trouble in Paradise.

https://i.imgur.com/Zqq3HP1.jpg

I surrendered to the bullying on the best films thread and got To Be or Not To Be out of the library. It had a lot of nice touches but as a child of the 70s any depiction of "tricking the funny Nazis" is going to make me feel like I've stumbled on a rerun of Hogan's Heroes.
I did like The Shop on the Corner a lot, and a silent film called The Wildcat was surprisingly entertaining.

Oyster King has some pretty good stuff in it

https://www.nga.gov/calendar/2025-annual-rajiv-vaidya-memorial-lecture-tom-gunning-perfect-films?evd=202512071900

Is Trouble in Paradise the perfect film? I don't know but I plan to give the lecturer a good listen. Anyone else interested in going?

It's Back in Blu & 4K: https://www.criterion.com/films/723-trouble-in-paradise

So great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99jdB3BH88

Yacht Club Boys - "The Super Special Picture of the Year"

a 1934 satirical song about his eminence

Must've been Lubitsch night on TCM recently since there is a ton of stuff on demand right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5o1eUORos