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

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

The Oyster Princess is probably the funniest of his silents that I've seen, with spatial gags and knockout, staircase-laden sets that reminded me of... Jerry Lewis! A must-see (on Kino disc).

http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image11/oysterprincess2.jpg

http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/archives/6520

wow that looks great, some amazing shots in that link

The Oyster Princess seconded.

new bio by Joseph McBride

Everything is explained, every rabbit hole is excavated; virtually every film given what in some other book would be a casual mention is examined here in Talmudic detail. If you think, “I wish I knew more about that” about a movie or star, read on; you will. (His treatment of Mary Pickford’s possible anti-Semitic loathing of Lubitsch, and their collaboration on 1923’s “Rosita,” is a good example of exhaustive exploration.) But he also makes us believe Lubitsch deserves it, as do his evergreen films.

https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/08/31/director-who-defined-classic-hollywood

Oh, this is excellent news - I absolutely adored his Capra biog back when I was in college

that was a massive one; i never finished it.

There have been some other Lubitsch books over the years but don’t recall a really good one so looking forward to this.

I am only now, at last, watching a Lubitsch film ("Trouble In Paradise") for the first time and I'm thinking, "Uh oh. New favorite."

have McBride book from library

The full schedule for To Save and Project, MoMA's annual festival of film preservation, is now on line! We open with the premiere of our own restoration of Ernst Lubitsch's FORBIDDEN PARADISE! https://t.co/J066veI356 pic.twitter.com/L3dATE6QzB

— MoMA Film (@MoMAFilm) December 13, 2018

Pola Negri is quite the spitfire in Wildcat.

Just watched Cluny Brown, and it is great fun - Jennifer Jones is wonderful in it

Just watched her firstborn do an interpretive dance in Easy Rider

Is that the daughter who committed suicide?

No, Robert Walker Jr., but that was a good question

The scene where Mr. Matuschek quietly, in an attempt to salvage his dignity, hangs around the shop hoping one of his employees invites him home for Christmas Eve is so perfectly paced that I convulse.

So much stuff in that so well done. Maybe I already commented on it up thread, but I love the scene where the big display pile of boxes gets knocked over, there is stillness for a beat or two, and then they all scramble to restack them.

Like, yes, all these people actually work in this place. Which I dunno when else I have ever thought that, maybe The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

I've been watching the shit out of Lubitsch lately (from the beginning of his talkie career, mostly in order). He's delightful and a new favorite. The Eclipse set of his musicals is one of the best Criterion purchases I've made in a while. Gonna watch Shop Around the Corner for the first time at some point over the next couple of days.

Yes that Eclipse thing is good