Lubitsch | Cary Grant Won't Eat You

Lubitsch, My Expectations Were Too High!

11/22/2017 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 2 Comments

Here’s a question: Can we blame a brilliant director for films that don’t match his usual brilliance? If a film has a little of his luster, enough to make it stand out from the rest, but not enough to make us clamor for repeat viewings, is it fair to claim, “That sucked?”

I just watched That Uncertain Feeling (1941), a comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, that master of the comedy of manners. At first, I was wooed: Some expected cleverness in the dialogue. A starring role for Burgess Meredith, whom I will always love for being Mickey from the Rocky franchise.

And Melvyn Douglas as the wronged husband, who brings a lighthearted energy and humor to his roles, making me like him even when I don’t enjoy his pictures.

Of course, casting Merle Oberon as the lead was a baffling choice. A cardboard cutout would make more comedic impact. But flat as her acting is, Oberon is equipped to play upper-crust types, and somehow reminded me of Tahani (Jameela Jamil) in The Good Place: her refinement verges on parody, but never quite achieves it (unlike the consistently amusing Jamil). I found myself ignoring her performance and just enjoying her strange clothes:

Burgess is funny as pretentious musician Alexander Sebastian, who lures bored housewife Jill Baker (Oberon) away from husband Larry (Douglas) by explaining modern art to her and otherwise displaying his supposed sophistication.

In my favorite move, Sebastian snatches an absurd amount of photos of himself from Jill’s home after she sways back to Larry; Burgess’s spoiled boy huffing as he does so is a thing of beauty. And Douglas employs Lubitsch’s air of the wised-up husband so well that you wish he were in a better film.

The true crime in the movie is the deployment of Eve Arden. How, Lubitsch, do you give Eve Arden NO WISECRACKS? Even in Grease, the woman is a riot, that expert sidekick with snark embedded in her DNA. Mildred Pierce and Stage Door fans, share my dismay. I found this film by seeking Arden vehicles, saw “Lubitsch,” imagined the director known for wit and actress expert at expressing it together, and found that…Oberon is given the good lines instead, with Arden left to rely on silly expressions:

Does that mean the film is bad? No. Lubitsch is Lubitsch, and frequently, we find the witty lines we’ve come to expect in his movies:

Jill, speaking of Sebastian: “He’s an individualist!”

Larry: “Is he that rich?”

And of course, we find that trademark cynical attitude toward marital fidelity that always makes me think of French films without the despondency. Larry resents his wife’s attachment to another man, but he isn’t brought low by it. Instead, he plays her, and often shows glee in doing so. He’s going to win her back, and he knows it. Whether through generosity (in giving her everything), or jealousy (in cozying up to Eve Arden’s Sally), or in nonchalance about the whole divorce process, he feeds on his knowledge of her. We know that all will turn out with the Bakers happy together in the end, even if the wife doesn’t have enough charm for us to understand all the fuss about her.

There’s also a funny framing device: the disloyalty began with Jill visiting a psychiatrist about nervous hiccups, which he manages to blame on a poor marriage. The meeting of the lovers occurs in the waiting room. This send-up of therapy is an amusing move, though I wish in the story we’d seen Sebastian’s sessions too, as hearing him drone on about the philistines around him with his expert sneer would have been so much fun.

I haven’t seen the original version of this film, Kiss Me Again, and suspect it’s better. If you have lower expectations, maybe you can get past Oberon and Arden, enjoy Burgess’s spot-on performance enough and the lines enough to forget the rest. I just wish I could.

Unexpectedly Romantic: The Mistress Giving the Wife Advice in The Smiling Lieutenant

02/12/2015 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 4 Comments

There’s something both charming and shocking about the song between Franzi (Claudette Colbert) and Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins) in The Smiling Lieutenant. The two are unexpected friends in this moment, after all; the film begins with Franzi’s passionate love affair with Niki (Maurice Chevalier), which is interrupted by Anna’s royal prerogative in choosing spouses. Once married to Anna against his will, Niki continues to see Franzi, but when they’re discovered, the latter makes the surprising decision to help Anna win his regard.

An alliance between a mistress and a wife usually involves plots against the erring husband. The Other Woman with Cameron Diaz is simply the latest example. Since Niki was there first, and no marriage would have taken place had Anna been less public in her regal affection, we feel for both women, and appreciate Franzi’s sacrifice for the happiness of these two who are now bound together. (And honestly, why fight for the guy? I’ve never found Chevalier bearable. The man mugged from his twenties to his Gigi days.)

A wonderful union forms between the two women when Franzi goes through Anna’s music (including “Cloister Bells” and “Maiden’s Prayer”). Franzi’s disdain in evident as she pronounces each song’s name, and her next comment illustrates the indecent train of her thought: “Let me see your underwear.”

Meekly, Anna complies:

“Cloister bells,” responds Franzi; she then shows her own:

And says, “That’s the kind of music you should play.”

Franzi goes to the piano and begins to sing her advice, with words that could have come from the front page of Cosmo. Wanna win your man? Franzi has the answer: “Jazz Up Your Lingerie.” In fact, I checked. Sure enough, Cosmo’s Valentine’s-inspired photo gallery last spring: “Sexy Lingerie Your Guy Will Love.”

Thankfully, this is a pre-Code Ernst Lubitsch film, and we know that, funny as this start may be, we have much more suggestion in store. First, we see Anna in her formal everyday clothing and stance.

Then we see her loosening up.

Bits of her old-fashioned hair pile up in a basket just before we’re treated to this wonderful depiction of what’s become of her prudish underwear:

Her frumpy nightgown then dissolves into barely-there lingerie, her ugly shoes into fetching heels. And just look at the change in her wardrobe!

I don’t think I have to tell you what happens next. Where else can Anna’s love life go but up, with sexy Franzi as her guide? Honestly, with the kind of chemistry these two women have together, it’s a shame they don’t hook up and leave annoying Niki behind. But improving her ex’s love life—and bringing happiness to his wife—are what this mistress does instead. Kind of romantic, isn’t it? (You can see the whole clip here.)

Nazis and Humor: The Shock of Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942)

04/17/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 2 Comments

Wrap your head around this fact: Two decades before Quentin Tarantino was born, Ernst Lubitsch directed a comedy about Nazis. Unlike Tarantino, whose own Nazi film was typically bloodthirsty, Lubitsch was best known for light fare, especially sophisticated sex farces so insightful and lacking in prudery that they remain startlingly modern and funny still today. Not surprisingly, Wes Anderson recently cited To Be or Not to Be, Lubitsch’s anti-Nazi comedy, as influential. Lubitsch and Anderson share a joy in puncturing human vanity and hypocrisy, a gift for efficiency in their visual symbolism, and an appreciation for moments of pathos within otherwise humorous films. They also are in love with silliness, and this film is full of it.

To Be or Not to Be is almost as frantic in pace as Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, so I’ll just explain the basics: An acting troupe in Warsaw pretends to be Nazis to undermine a plot against the Resistance. The troupe is led by Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), a man arrogant about his acting but insecure about his wife Maria’s (Carole Lombard’s) fidelity—and rightly so: She invites an aviator (a very young Robert Stack of Unsolved Mysteries fame) to her dressing room every time her husband begins the famous speech in Hamlet that gives the movie its name. (Joseph’s not initially aware of her flirtation, though he becomes obsessed with the flier’s rudeness in leaving during his soliloquy.)

Who knew Robert Stack could be funny?

Like Joseph, the Nazis in the film are obsessed with the reactions of others to their words. When they joke about their leader’s vegetarianism or reputation, they fear their peers’ reprisals, and quickly state “Heil Hitler” to appear patriotic. The implication throughout the film is that the Nazis are much like the actors imitating them: full of insecurity and quick to express pronouncements they utter rather than feel.

The movie begins with an actor from the troupe who is playing Hitler in a play that’s about to fold. He’s anxious to prove his plausibility in the role due to a blistering attack by his director. “I don’t know. It’s not convincing,” the director says, looking at the clothes and makeup meant to imitate the Führer. “To me, he’s just a man with a little mustache.”

“But so is Hitler,” the actor responds defensively.

An actor (Tom Dugan) saying “Heil myself” as Hitler in a doomed production.

As in most of Lubitsch’s films, the marital sexual farce is highly entertaining. In a typical moment, Maria’s assistant quips, “What a husband doesn’t know won’t hurt his wife.” But this farce goes beyond the main couple. The Nazis are not only fooled by these actors’ poor performances as Gestapo, but are also easily convinced that the beautiful Maria will be captivated by their power. They repeat “Heil Hitler” not only as a defense or conversation filler, but as a pickup line. Clearly, Lubitsch feels these Nazis are using their lethal reputation as a substitute for manhood. “And before the evening is over,” a Nazi spy says suggestively to Maria, “I’m sure you’ll say ‘Heil, Hitler.’” (I gasped when I heard this—Did I just hear a racy use of Hitler?) Sure enough, after he kisses her, Maria replies, “Heil Hitler” in a loaded, sexy tone in imitation of the man she’s duping.

Maria (Lombard) feigning attraction to a Nazi spy.

Maria’s faux seduction mimics her earlier comforting of her needy spouse, though this time it’s for a worthier cause. But just as with Joseph, Maria’s cooing words mean little. She proves that it’s a man of action, not the Nazis or her narcissistic husband, who will likely win her bed in the end. When the RAF flier (Stack) gushes about the thrill of meeting an actress, Maria breathily replies, “Lieutenant, this is the first time I’ve ever met a man who could drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes.”

As for the Nazis, the actors do occasionally falter against them, mainly due to their inability to get over their egos. But there’s something gallant about these blundering Warsaw patriots, and one in particular, just as with M. Gustave of The Grand Budapest Hotel. This troupe of actors is goofy and flawed and outrageously vain. But as Lubitsch implies in the film, what act isn’t noble, against such enemies as these?