Eclipse Series 8: Lubitsch Musicals

[HerrSchreck]

I disagree on most fundamental points here. I feel that the formal consistency that you honor is a hiding place from which Lubitsch almost never strayed, and that this consistency rarely shows sparkle, innovation, or depth as a "director", and thus the end result is not very highly cinematic to me, personally.

Auteurism for a man like Lubitsch to me is problemmatic when assigning it a quality of honor. In reality he shows a style that worked for him, and repeats it... with very few true resounding masterpieces of the type we're talking here. If Mamoulian says "here's what's been done with this genre, now I'll take the expressive limits of these just a bit further and show you how clever I am"... then Lubitsch says "here's what I've done with this genre, I-- with this studio gumming my thumbs & licking my boots and giving my everything and everything-- will now take this no further and show you just how narrow my idea of cinema is."

And I don't agree with the assessment of Mamoulian-- most of the genres he toyed with, starting with 1929's Applause, were either nonexistent at the time or in their absolute infancy; and what he did with them (in my opinion, of course) is not take them just a bit further, but turn them into absolutely sublime cinema. Real, eternal high art cinema with depth and well assembled breadth. And such wildly divergent projects, which are astonishingly different from the "genres" that were just then being established... this may make Mam the person-- the auteur-- more difficult to track or pin down within the text (though certainly the deft deeply felt montage, the wonderfully moving camera, the sense of the avant garde and the wonderful use of multiple narrative surfaces assigning unscripted values to progressing elements within his melodramatic arc and symbol order, identify a clear style running thru), I think this is a plus, something to be hugely admired, meeting the challenge of crafting masterpieces out of wildly divergent projects assigned. Kind of an avant garde, self-reflexive John Ford. It's just a shame that he clashed so severely with the bosses in the mid 30's. When he got back into the swing he was handed technicolor grot.

[domino harvey]

I just realized I never chimed in with thoughts on One Hour With You. I thought the song about wedding rings at the beginning was one of the best in the set, maybe the dirtiest song of all. Adolph and the Professor looked so much alike that I occasionally got confused. The abundance of audience interaction in this one got a little weary by the end. Still, funnier than the Smiling Lieutenant.

[HerrSchreck]

It's all good, brother. I try to flag my comments that might piss people off (and those that wouldnt, though one never knows) with the disclaimer "this is only my opinion". Same as you.

The true history of cinema is too large for any one mind or textbook to carry around with any potential for meaningful exposition or digestion.. thus there are a thousand and one different histories of cinema, with each person having their own shining stars. I know you have your own very eclectic (at least as eclectic as my own, but with a probably morebroader-sweep sense of appreciation of a wider field of films) tastes in cinema.

Re Lubitsch in particular, I'm of two minds when it comes to his style and career: whenever someone complains about an artist, any artist, that their last work is similar to their penultimate (or earlier) work, it perplexes me. If a person is highly original, develops their own style which echoes the noise that the inside of their brain is making when all is quiet... that's about the best one can hope for. An artist staying true to their inner voice.

Film is a bit different, than say a popular music artist who is writing his own material-- particularly in the golden era. Few experienced the freedom Lubitsch had. So, before describing the converse nature of my "other mind" I'd say

to be honest, I can take or leave Love Me Tonight-- it cracked me up, but I've watched it once and never returned to it. The same way I never return to most Lubitsch. Comedy/drama is one thing, but lite comedy tends to be fun at first or second view until all the jokes are memorized or anticipated. If there's nothing left, and the style is invisible and devoid of depper substance, there's just nothing left. In my life I came very late to Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, Lubitsch to a degree, etc. Even more sophisticated material like the best of Sturges may get an annual view at most. The movies that strike me the heaviest are the movies that, well strike me the heaviest. I don't find Lubitsch anywhere near as funny as, say Jean Vigo, and he doesn't have any of the meaning, the substance, the wonderful eternal poetry for me to see him as a Grand Master the way others do. And his truly captial G Great Comedies are too few and far between for me to see his consistency as something worth a huge salute. It may well be a black mark against him. In the past when just starting to sing I had a tendency to avoid moments of direct intimacy with my voice-- I'd slip into a "cool" or streety phrasing. An old drummer friend kept pointing out how I'd keep scooping with my phrasing, and indicated those rare moments where I allowed myself to open up and how much they worked and got to him. It was a revelation, and I broke the protective shield and my work became more complete.

Which takes me to my other mind about following the inner voice. On one hand Lubitsch is true to his inner voice... but his vocabulary was small. Very small. And he never really sought to expand it, or at least find a way to do so in a way that meant anything beyond the surprising moment of poignancy during a melancholic goodbye during the close of a ribald drawing room comedy. Considering the length of his career, and the great carte blanche granted to him, and the millieu from which he hatched, I think his formal qualities are pretty rudiementary given the fact that they seemed to progress hardly at all. Even John Ford, another anti-avant enemy of the self-reflexive, whose style was very difficult to pin down or detect, showed an ambition in his films and a recognition of the vast vocabulary and means of punctuation, all the glorious surfaces, etc, available to him. So while Lubitsch can be great fun and a hoot-- don't get me wrong-- in terms of cinema I walk away with very little more than a good time.

And on many terms that's good enough. As it should be. But when laid against the incisive sincerity and overhwelming originality of Applause, City Streets, and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde-- and, for many I guess, Love Me Tonight-- and their maker during those years, for me there's just no comparison. Mamoulian, brand new to the cinema, from the getgo showed he could hang perfectly comfortably in Lubitsch's zone of operation. Whereas the vocabulary of the first three above are completely out of the depth range of Lubitsch. The rich vocabulary with the camera and the cutting knife, the complexity, black sophistication of humor, the sublime poetry, street sense were as alien to the hurdy gurdy nature of Lube as roller skates to a crippled giraffe.

[Jaime_Weinman]

Comedy/drama is one thing, but lite comedy tends to be fun at first or second view until all the jokes are memorized or anticipated. If there's nothing left, and the style is invisible and devoid of depper substance, there's just nothing left.

I don't think comedy is inherently less substantial than drama, though I suspect that this is pretty commonly believed now even among directors who claim to love comedy. (There used to be many celebrated directors who would proudly make straightforward romantic comedies with happy endings, and get acclaimed for it. Now that kind of comedy is mostly made by hacks and the good directors make kinda-sorta comedies with kinda-sorta happy endings. Though the good, solid, substantial comedy may be starting to make a comeback of sorts.) That's a matter of personal taste, of course.

But I will say that I don't really agree with your statement that Lubitsch was never willing to stretch himself. Of course after the mid-'20s he primarily worked within the romantic-comedy genre with its built-in rules (except for The Man I Killed which not only sucks, but suggests to me what John L. Sullivan's Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? might have been like). But within that genre, he was constantly trying different things and themes, maybe more so than most comedy directors. It's not like after succeeding with Ninotchka (not one of his better movies anyway) he kept on returning to that well; The Shop Around the Corner is an exploration of the workplace life, To Be Or Not to Be is a very different type of political comedy from Ninotchka and Heaven Can Wait is a strange attempt to do a plotless story of a man whose life was of no apparent worth at all.

Whether you like those individual movies or not, there's a different reason for doing each one and a different idea they're exploring, which was probably more important to Lubitsch than the camera setups. (Again, we're talking about the odd case of a director whose style shows more distinctively in the actors' performances than in the way they're photographed.) And since most Lubitsch comedies are based on a theme that runs through most of the scenes and jokes (the intersection of music and sex in Smiling Lieutenant, theft and crime in Trouble in Paradise, workplace experience in Shop, politics-as-theatre in To Be), I think that gives them greater weight and substance than you give them credit for.

Mamoulian is someone to me without any distinct directorial personality. He's a more than competent, and sometimes brilliant metteur en scene but his projects always seem to say to me "here's what's been done with this genre, now I'll take the expressive limits of these just a bit further and show you how clever I am" - thus Love me Tonight borrowing from Clair to an American context and milieu, but showing nothing like, for instance the central integration Clair makes of the boulevardier tradition with "realism" and with the integration of song into the narrative.

What I think Love Me Tonight has over the other early musicals is the way Mamoulian managed to combine his own directorial personality with truly great songs. Clair and Lubitsch and other early musical directors did not usually work with songs of the quality and substance of Rodgers and Hart's, but used songs that would not distract from the action. (Even if Lubitsch was given a hit song like "Beyond the Blue Horizon" he'd cut it down to only a minute and a half. He was not about to let the songwriters take over the movie.) By working closely with Rodgers and Hart, Mamoulian was able to insert long, substantial musical sequences where the songs are the centre of attention -- when you have a song as good as "Isn't It Romantic?" it's hard for anything else to be the focus -- yet the storytelling, camerawork, etc. don't just stop for the song. That's a genuine milestone, I think, especially because Mamoulian would carry these lessons with him to Broadway and revolutionize the stage musical, and in turn these things trickled back into Hollywood. When you see a "golden age" musical where the best scenes are perfect fusions of staging and songwriting, instead of the song just supporting the staging or vice-versa, you're seeing the legacy of Mamoulian.

[HerrSchreck]

Jaime I wouldn't take exception to anything you've said except for

Whether you like those individual movies or not, there's a different reason for doing each one and a different idea they're exploring, which was probably more important to Lubitsch than the camera setups. (Again, we're talking about the odd case of a director whose style shows more distinctively in the actors' performances than in the way they're photographed.) And since most Lubitsch comedies are based on a theme that runs through most of the scenes and jokes (the intersection of music and sex in Smiling Lieutenant, theft and crime in Trouble in Paradise, workplace experience in Shop, politics-as-theatre in To Be), I think that gives them greater weight and substance than you give them credit for.

I DO give them credit, as I said. On their own terms they are absolutely positively good enough: well thought out comedy melodramas which absorb you fully and completely (the good ones anyhoo) and send you out in a good mood. You have a good time. And in certain terms there's nothing more to ask of a nights entertainment.

What I said is that the achievement pales for me only when compared to the near (short term, at least) revolution of Mamoulian in from Applause to Love Me/Jekyll/City Streets. There are wavering degrees of credit attributed to various projects, which will tweak according to emotional response.

To me the kind of comedy that murders me is the comedy of Zero De Conduit, L'Atalante, Chaplin's City Lights, Loyds Safety Last or Haunted Spooks, Keaton's The General. Mystery of the Leaping Fish. I return to Plan Nine From Outer Space almost bimonthly. I give the very best of Lubitsch maybe an annual go round.

In the the cave of my Taste Register, my simple saying that "this stuff is not Fanaticalville for me" doesn't mean I don't think there's no excellence there.

All based on tastes of course.

[colinr0380]

DVD Savant review

[whaleallright]

(Again, we're talking about the odd case of a director whose style shows more distinctively in the actors' performances than in the way they're photographed.)

A false opposition, I think. Much of the "Lubitsch touch" resides in the way he coordinates his actors' gestures and his cutting style -- with great precision. I would say the art direction and overall mise en scène associated with Lubitsch is distinctive as well (the high ceilings and overall play with extremes of size, the aggressive use of backlighting) but plainly not as distinctive as, say, Sternberg.

Another major component of the "Lubitsch touch" is the playful narration (narration in the narratological sense, not the VO sense) -- an overt game of chance and expectation played with the audience, emblematized in the shatterings of the fourth wall in, say, THE LOVE PARADE.

Of course yet another element is the continental insouciance and sexual frankness.

Any others to add?

[HerrSchreck]

(Again, we're talking about the odd case of a director whose style shows more distinctively in the actors' performances than in the way they're photographed.)

A false opposition, I think. Much of the "Lubitsch touch" resides in the way he coordinates his actors' gestures and his cutting style -- with great precision. I would say the art direction and overall mise en scène associated with Lubitsch is distinctive as well (the high ceilings and overall play with extremes of size, the aggressive use of backlighting) but plainly not as distinctive as, say, Sternberg.

Another major component of the "Lubitsch touch" is the playful narration (narration in the narratological sense, not the VO sense) -- an overt game of chance and expectation played with the audience, emblematized in the shatterings of the fourth wall in, say, THE LOVE PARADE.

Of course yet another element is the continental insouciance and sexual frankness.

Any others to add?

I think there's a bit of over-attribution here based on love. Tight cutting in and of itself isn't really a "directorial style", neither are continental insouciance or sexual frankness. Tight (not necc "rapid") cutting is a requirement for any kind of a "finished" feeling film of value, and can exist within any number of directorial styles, like "good photography" or "good acting". The latter are cinematic styles or genres, which any number of directors have approached with a huge variance of personal style. These are the zones in ascript which one begins with, before one even sets down to think about deploying cast or crew in whatever positions are chosen. I'd go so far as saying Lubitsch's whole topical obsession with the drawing room and the upper bourgoisie is not only NOT a directorial style, but may have actually prevented him from branching out into zones that could have upped the number of truly memorable films the man produced after the mid-30's (and perhaps forced him into deeper contact with himself, maybe get down with something a little but more personally meaningful, but it never really happened.)

[GringoTex]

I think there's a bit of over-attribution here based on love. Tight cutting in and of itself isn't really a "directorial style", neither are continental insouciance or sexual frankness. Tight (not necc "rapid") cutting is a requirement for any kind of a "finished" feeling film of value, and can exist within any number of directorial styles, like "good photography" or "good acting".

This is all true in regard to the idea of tight cutting in general, but Lubitsch's tight cutting is specific- hence, a style. His tight cutting means he never allows his characters to think or ponder on a situation, to reflect on moral positions, or to assess their surroundings. And he loves the ellipse. It's very similar to Hawks, but whereas Hawks' characters are too busy doing something for the luxury of self-reflection, Lubitsch's characters are too busy doing nothing. (this is why I consider Hawks and Lubitsch the most atheist of filmmakers- it never occurs to them to even ponder the existence of a higher being).

Again, I want to point out that as tight as Lubitcsh cuts, he always makes room for a character to enter a room and to leave it. His is a style of transience.

[Captain Bill]

The ten year old Universal laserdisc set, The Lubitsch Touch, had a slightly different transfer of "One Hour With You". Several scenes were tinted, mostly sepia with a few in blue. Also, there were about two minutes of exit music. These have been omitted from the Eclipse set. Anyone know why?
By the way, this is not a complaint, because I am thoroughly delighted with the Eclipse set and have watched it several times already, putting off other recent purchases. Sorry, Captain Jack!

[Captain Bill]

Actually, film tinting did not die out with silent movies. See the thorough Wikipedia article under Film tinting, which says, in part, "In 1929, Kodak added to their tinted stocks a brand known as Sonochrome — pre-tinted stocks for sound films that did not interfere with the soundtrack....Tinting was utilized for years up until the early 1950s in select sequences, full monochromatic pictures and short trailers and snipes." The splice bumps where tints changed can be readily seen in the laserdisc of "One Hour With You" and fortunately have been smoothed out in the Eclipse release. I suppose tinting is something of a personal taste today, and I tend to prefer inclusion.
And I would still appreciate knowing why the exit music is gone, although I am more ambivalent about the UCLA restoration credit.

[zedz]

Actually, film tinting did not die out with silent movies.

And there's the very recent tinted / untinted release of Wee Willie Winkie in Ford at Fox to support this.

[Danny Burk]

There are a few other 30s films released with full tinting, in addition to ONE HOUR WITH YOU....THIS IS THE NIGHT, also Paramount, and ZOO IN BUDAPEST at Fox. Supposedly some prints of FRANKENSTEIN were released with a green tint, but I haven't seen this actually confirmed.

I'd always thought that WEE WILLIE WINKIE was merely an overall sepia, as were a few other contemporary films such as THE GOOD EARTH and opening/closing parts of WIZARD OF OZ, and was surprised to see that it included several blue-tinted night scenes.

[GringoTex]

The Smiling Leutineant

What Lubitsch does in the last 8 minutes of this film--transforming Hopkins into Colbert's superior without any dialogue (after using 80 minutes of dialogue to make Hopkins Colbert's inferior)--is a master act and should be taught in every film school in the world. It's breathtaking.

[HerrSchreck]

Incidentally Gringo I don't see the trait of "in and out of doors" entering/exiting running as a thru-line in Lubitsch, at least as far as his mise en scene. These may be "madcap" traits specific to the scripts (narrative pacing) in these early musicals (and hence not a directorial characteristic), but looking at his really accomplished works like Oyster Princes, Boleyn, thru Trouble In & SHop Around (or even Heaven Can) I don't see this at all. And certainly in these works we see characters very much reflecting upon themselves and their positions in the world: Trouble running a slightly melancholic undertone about identity (false and real), conscience and consequence and lost love; Shop Around being love, social position, loneliness, the desire for love and Something Better... Heaven Can is pure self reflection and introspection. Soul searching indeed.

[GringoTex]

Incidentally Gringo I don't see the trait of "in and out of doors" entering/exiting running as a thru-line in Lubitsch, at least as far as his mise en scene. These may be "madcap" traits specific to the scripts (narrative pacing) in these early musicals (and hence not a directorial characteristic), but looking at his really accomplished works like Oyster Princes, Boleyn, thru Trouble In & SHop Around (or even Heaven Can) I don't see this at all. And certainly in these works we see characters very much reflecting upon themselves and their positions in the world: Trouble running a slightly melancholic undertone about identity (false and real), conscience and consequence and lost love; Shop Around being love, social position, loneliness, the desire for love and Something Better... Heaven Can is pure self reflection and introspection. Soul searching indeed.

Since I introduced the Lubitsch doors thang, I'll tabulate the portal instances in Trouble and Shop, but I already sold my copy of Heaven because I think it's as big a piece of shit as you do.

I agree that Shop is Lubitsch's most introspective film, but I think it's an anomaly is his career (still a great film).

I think you're wrong in attributing the doors obsession to "madcap traits" rather than a Lubitsch style. He was the one inventing these traits. It's his mise-en-scene that so many others copied. There's a reason he was hero-worshipped by so many of his contemporaries. If you can point me out a film before Lubitsch's that has a portal opening and closing every 80 seconds, I'll concede the point.

I agree with you completely about the power of melancholia in Trouble, but I think it's power is a result of Lubitsch's aversion to self-reflection. It's his great dialectical excercise and one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.

[HerrSchreck]

[I think you're wrong in attributing the doors obsession to "madcap traits" rather than a Lubitsch style. He was the one inventing these traits.

That's pure, straight visual comedy straight out of the silent era, reaching back to to the teens & Mack Sennett, the Kops, Chaplin shorts, Keaton, in a thousand and one chase scenes with some sadsack buttlump being followed thru department store escalator, skating rink, battlefield, automobile, across streets, over roofs, stomping thru weddings (sometimes all in one one minute sweep), etc, where the in/out ratio (where not talking porn here, calm down everyone) speed of light narratives (that everyone's seen, and seen imitated a thousand times in cartoons) far exceed that of Lubitsch comedies.

Not to say that Lube didnt have moments where he did his own thing with it of course. But this particular device, to keep the audience amped up and involved in physical expectance, was old hat by the time of these musicals.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

where the in/out ratio (where not talking porn here, calm down everyone)

Sorry, but speaking of comedy, this line really made me laugh. Can we start a HerrSchreck's greatest hits thread?

[colinr0380]

DVD Times review

[Michael Kerpan]

Finally saw Monte Carlo for the first time. I actually found Jack Buchanan a welcome break from Chevalier (who gets on my nerves after a while). And Jeanette McDonald is pretty delightful in this. Most of the music was trivial, alas.

[Tommaso]

Actually I made the mistake of starting the set with "One hour with you" where I found Chevalier completely annoying; in retrospect, after seeing the other films I guess it was more the film itself that annoyed me (I find it completely unnecessary if one compares it to its original, "The Marriage Circle") and I began to like Chevalier very much in "The Love Parade" and "Lieutenant", although his style is not much different there; it just fits those films much better.
I have no problem with Buchanan, though. His 'quieter' style helps a lot to give Jeanette McDonald her due, and "Monte Carlo" is a wonderful film in my view: it's frank, cynical in a good-natured way (which is not a contradiction in this case) and very,very stylish. I agree that the music is 'trivial', but I think it's intentionally so; making fun of all those 'high society' characters and reducing them to their petty bourgeois 'real selves'. And some of the tunes just stick in your head ("Trimmin' Women" for instance; a song that would probably have been impossible to put into a film a few years later, under the 'code').

[Svevan]

The Smiling Leutineant

What Lubitsch does in the last 8 minutes of this film--transforming Hopkins into Colbert's superior without any dialogue (after using 80 minutes of dialogue to make Hopkins Colbert's inferior)--is a master act and should be taught in every film school in the world. It's breathtaking.

I know I'm totally late-to-the-party with this one, but I just do not see this transformation. All Hopkins does is put on a superficial gloss: fancy clothes, jazz, slinky nightgowns, cigarettes, and a hard-to-get playfulness. Her character definitely had my sympathy more than Colbert, but for much longer than 8 minutes. Chevalier and Colbert's two-timing was hard to endorse when Hopkins was just as fooled into the arrangement as Chevalier. I was hoping for a resolution that set up Hopkins as an independent person, while Chevalier and Colbert reunite. The way the film plays out, Chevalier is a cad who likes women who wear certain things and act a certain way; he has no care for her at all, because she has in no way demonstrated herself as "Colbert's superior" other than her proximity to Chevalier (door-down-the-hall rather than country-next-door).

[movielocke]

I thought I had seen Monte Carlo years ago, but I wasn't sure and it wasn't in my list of films seen when I watched the others in this set. I popped it in and quickly realized I hadn't seen it. Just now, I quickly popped in here and realized I hadn't posted a thought months ago when I watched it. The music is terrible, and this might be the worst of the musicals aspects of the films in the set, the film, however, is better than one hour with you. The lead males were insipid and irritating, and the overall story was forgettable and drawn out. There was some okay humor and amusing scenarios, but nothing to recommend it, imo.

[hearthesilence]

Looks like that Lubitsch retrospective at Film Forum has now moved to the Harvard Film Archive, with The Love Parade screening this weekend (a 35mm preservation print from UCLA). I just revisited it myself and it's all the more impressive when you notice the release date is in 1929 - when I think of all the clumsy sound films from that year, it makes this one seem like a shock. Has any great silent filmmaker handled the transition to sound better than Lubitsch? It doesn't even feel like a transition. There's no awkwardness or clumsiness to it, quite the opposite - right out of the gate he has mastered the use of sound. What's ridiculous is the lengths he had to go to do what in a short while would be the simplest of tasks. From TCM's website:

Cutting sound recordings in those early days was just this side of impossible. Typically, when a song would be sung onscreen in 1929, the camera stayed focused on the singer, without cutting away, while the performer sang along live to a real orchestra, playing off-screen. In one show-stopping sequence of outrageous ambition, Lubitsch not only cuts during a song, he cuts back and forth between two different couples singing the same song in two different locations. To even do this at all, he had to have the two sets built side-by-side, alongside a single off-camera orchestra, and two separate sound-proofed camera baffles aimed at the two sets. Ernst sat on a stool between the two sets and directed both scenes simultaneously. The soundtrack was recorded intact in a single pass--no cutting of it was required, and the synchronized images could be cut back and forth with technical impunity.

[Michael Kerpan]

Well, Gosho's Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor's Wife and Mine -- an idiotic English name ), the first real talkie by a major Japanese studio, is remarkably sophisticated, sound-wise.