• Trouble in Paradise

12/15/20 (Tues)

Finally a screwball comedy that doesn’t depend on impossible plot twists or unnaturally eccentric characters. Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film offers a straightforward story delivered in exceptionally high style, including a fabulously quotable script and totally believable three-dimensional characters. It’s the closest I’ve seen an American show come to British drawing room comedy, albeit written by an American, Samson Raphaelson, based on a Hungarian play. It benefits from supremely confident performances by the three main performers, especially the unflappable Herbert Marshall as the sleekest of crooks, along with wonderful supporting character actors. The romantic settings of Venice and Paris, the social world of the high life – or low life pretending to be high life – and particularly the champagne banter are pretty near perfect. This is operetta in prose.

A crooked male-female team posing as nobility aim to rip off an heiress by claiming the reward for an excessively expensive bag that they had stolen in the first place. However, the man, seeing even greater riches ahead, insinuates himself into the woman’s household as her personal secretary in control of her finances. He has every intention of stripping her to her last dime, but his partner, who he has brought along as an assistant, sees danger in allowing her smooth, good-looking partner near the clutches of the beautiful heiress. Her concerns quickly prove valid as the man becomes torn between his partner in crime and the rich socialite.

This is the picture that gave birth to the phrase, the “Lubitsch touch”, reflecting the director’s high taste. The art deco sets and gorgeous clothing are impossibly glamorous, a stylish world that may never have existed but should have. The surprising sexual innuendo apparently ran afoul of the subsequent Hays Code, and the film was not reissued until 1968, when innuendo had long since given way to overt sex. This is really an ancient world.

Marshall gives a wonderfully understated performance as Gaston, master of antiques, makeup, languages (he speaks Russian at one point), witty conversation and impeccably good manners. He has a slight stoop that hints at intimacy, and moves gracefully despite having a wooden leg courtesy of WWI. Kay Francis is cool and self-assured as the heiress. Her seduction of Gaston is masterful, and her acceptance of the situation at film’s end neatly avoids sentimentalism. Miriam Hopkins is also fine as the female thief who’s not about to let a man walk over her. Veterans Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles were memorable as well as the two suitors. Highly recommended.