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

'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.

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.

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.