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

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.

haha

@pareene
There is really an unnecessarily large number of people working at Mr. Matuschek's store every day

fuckin' Cluny Brown still unavailable on DVD in America.

(xp)
B-b-b-but it was the Christmas rush!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpfSP-EJXI8

also, you'll need a pal player but i have to assume you have one
http://www.amazon.com/Cluny-Brown-NON-USA-FORMAT-Import/dp/B0041KXFDO

i got my copy from TCM on Tivo and goddamn, it's a winner

just rewatched Design for Living on Criterion... Milton is right, cept as the guy doing the commentary suggests that the ending is a bit dark; after all, they are going back to poverty to live 'outside society.'

March's take when Hopkins (who is just great) says "Something happened to me that usually only happens to a man" is a highlight.

I can't believe that bum EE Horton put the whole thing on YT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fha0SlGIpM0

I watched the Criterion edition last week too. The movie's too cute by half, I think.

pish tosh

Needs the morning newspaper thrown at his head.

watching those three marvelous actors on that train, going for laughs when no laugh track exists

there was an audience at some point you know in December '33

People laugh during the gaps in Laurel & Hardy films too -- honest!

when it ended I watched Cluny Brown for the 400th time.

Bogdanovich shares his notes file:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-lubitsch-file-part-3

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-lubitsch-file-part-2

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-lubitsch-file-part-1

rewatched Trouble In Paradise, forgot that fellow eunuch Charlie Ruggles is the bane of EE Horton's existence.

Armond on Bogdanovich & Lubitsch:

http://cityarts.info/2013/06/10/at-long-last-lubitsch/

of course he loves at long last love. here's cybill shepherd talking about it: http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/cybill-shepherd-on-at-long-last-love. pity i can't find a clip of madeline kahn doing 'down in the depths on the 90th floor', she really is the highlight of a dreary dreary movie.

on Lubitsch and the great Jack Benny:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2888-how-to-film-jack-benny

A new critical anthology:

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/in-times-like-these-lubitsch-cant-wait

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.

― Le présent se dégrade, d'abord en histoire, puis en (Michael White), Wednesday, 22 April 2009 3:25 PM (5 years ago)

Yeah, the sets in that are amazing; also 1919's Die Puppe / The Doll:
http://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/die_puppe_1919_advert.jpg
http://silentsplease.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/13-die-puppe-ossi-chew-2.gif

http://silentsplease.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/die-puppe/

saw Shop again today (yesterday?), incredible. From "A little too much goose liver" to "Could you let me see your legs now?" Samson Raphaelson needs a shoutout as one of the great comedy writers.

It stays in my mind as among the best written films I've ever seen.

watched it for the first time over the holidays – stunning. I knew very little about it, thought it would be a jolly enough romantic classic – wasn't ready for the wit's sharpness, the waves of unhappiness, the perfect construction. Amazing.

closeup of Sullavan's hand failing to find Stewart's letter in mailbox.

Unusual that despite the Budapest Hollywood conceit, almost all the set signage is in Hungarian.

To make sure his film was stripped of the glamor usually associated with him, Lubitsch went to such lengths as ordering that a dress Sullavan had purchased off the rack for $1.98 be left in the sun to bleach and altered to fit poorly.

This is his only non-glamourous picture, no?

Remember remarking upon Hungarian signage years ago, then forgetting.

love this movie. when i first saw it i knew it only as the nominal inspiration for You've Got Mail. It is, of course, infinitely better than that suggests.

The YGM connection is the very reason that I have, if not outright avoided this film, than at least never made seeing it a priority. I should finally get on that. Next TCM airing, I promose.

rewatched To Be or Not to Be over the weekend... not my fave as it gets too straight-ahead plotty now and then, but man, that "Dropping dynamite" line + Benny's takes.

We should POLL the silents. Or at least watch and report back.

that great GREAT Polish actor

What he is doing to Shakespeare, we are doing to this thread.

wouldn't have voted for it but missing 'the marriage circle' is some bullshit.

i saw this yesterday at MoMA... It's the original of One Hour with You. Monte Blue, sort of the male lead, gets on my nerves a little, but the other 3 principals are a hoot (incl 'young' Adolphe Menjou and Marie Prevost, whose early demise was later scrutinized by Kenneth Anger and Nick Lowe).

https://www.google.com/search?q=lubitsch+marriage+circle&espv=2&biw=1262&bih=951&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4u9mh1OjKAhWJ0h4KHY8RAMsQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=lubitsch+marriage+circle+egg&imgrc=TGpcBhOXXjJcyM%3A

http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/thovena-actors/imgs/6/2/62ade80a.png

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

― Milton Parker, Monday, January 2, 2012 5:08 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

just rewatched Design for Living on Criterion... Milton is right, cept as the guy doing the commentary suggests that the ending is a bit dark; after all, they are going back to poverty to live 'outside society.'

March's take when Hopkins (who is just great) says "Something happened to me that usually only happens to a man" is a highlight.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, April 14, 2013 8:34 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

Wow, this is so good. I disagree with the Criterion commentary person – when they have their muse Gilda by their side, George and Tom do their best and most successful work and can live outside society with money. If they go back to live in their dingy little flat, it'll be by choice.

another retro underway in NYC, but this has some things I don't remember being shown before at FF.

https://www.artforum.com/film/id=68825

http://filmforum.org/series/the-lubitsch-touch

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!"

Saw a couple more Lubitsch silents, incl this cute crossdressing number:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=non55zCjx8Y

and the other a sort of Taming of the Shrew in Bavaria. Emil Jannings in a comedy lead!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Vn1I_Wdi0

For my 23rd E.L. film, a sorta reverse Taming of the Shrew, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. Solid, funny second-tier Lubitsch, written by Wilder and Brackett.

Gary Cooper is much funnier with Ernst than with Capra, and Claudette Colbert pulls off one of those impossible good-natured wife-as-avenger roles. Very screwball: there's an early confrontation between Edw Ev Horton and Franklin Pangborn! Young David Niven surprisingly well-fit in a supporting schlemiel role.

http://www.rowthree.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Bluebeards-Eighth-Wife.jpg

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.