NFR Project: 'Trouble in Paradise' (1932)

 

NFR Project: ‘Trouble in Paradise’

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Scr: Sam Raphaelson

Pho: Victor Milner

Ed: N/A

83 min.

What is the “Lubitsch touch” everyone talks about?

The Lubitsch touch is an attitude as much as it is a style. In films that treat affairs of the heart and of the bedroom, Lubitsch projects a bemused tolerance for the romantic follies of humankind, detailing them with lovely and revelatory care. He is nearly always up to something, frankly outlining sexual relationships through subtle allusion, making his point through the symbolic use of objects. His visual wit, honed through his extensive work in silent film, is as sharp as the verbal wit that would soon festoon his sound films, classics such as this film.

Ernst Lubitsch started off his career in Germany in the silent days as a comic performer. He moved into directing and soon was celebrated for his prowess. His films were shown in America (Madame DuBarry was one of the first European films to be shown in America in 1919) and soon Hollywood (specifically, Mary Pickford) recruited him to make films there.

In a sense, “the Lubitsch touch” was a marketing ploy, but the publicity men were correct, Lubitsch was one of the first directors to have an identifiable style, working in a subgenre of his own creating, the sensitive, mature sex comedy.

In Trouble in Paradise, it is the scoundrels that are honorable and kind, possessing the best of manners as they fleece their victims. Two such guttersnipes, Gaston (the suave Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins), discover each other’s game in a romantic villa overlooking Venice, where garbagemen ply gondolas as they trill songs of love.

They team up and go to Paris, where they find a new victim in Madame Colet (Kay Francis), a famous and rich perfume manufacturer. In seeking to defraud her, Gaston finds himself falling in love with her. He becomes her manager, and Lily her secretary. Meanwhile, as they scheme, Colet’s beaus, the absurd colonel (Charlie Ruggles) and Mr. Filiba (Edward Everett Horton), realize that Gaston is a thief, and they set the police on them.

Gaston is torn – between Lily and Colet, between getting away and getting away with considerably more cash than he previously thought possible. (He also reveals his discovery that Madame’s previous manager, the virtuous-seeming Giron (the venerable C. Aubrey Smith) has been stealing millions from her for years. It is the “respectable” people that are the real crooks.)

Discovering the resolution I will leave to you, because the film is well worth seeing. The dialogue (“Marriage is a mistake that two people make together”) sparkles, and the sly gags, involving bedroom doors, clocks, and more straight-faced suggestiveness than you have likely seen.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Dinner at Eight.