Criterion has released a 4K UHD Blu-ray of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film, Trouble in Paradise.

The vintage film has never looked better than in this New 4K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The disc features audio commentary by Scott Eyman, Lubitsch’s biographer, imported from Criterion’s 2003 Blu-ray release.

This release also includes the upgraded standard Blu-ray version of the film.

I am a huge fan of Lubitsch’s films, but for some reason I have never understood why this one is held in such high esteem these days. Frankly, I’ve never understood the popularity of films about jewel thieves in general. Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly is my least favorite 1950s film from the master of suspense.

Released in October 1932, Trouble in Paradise was Lubitsch’s third film released that year following Broken Lullaby and One Hour with You, both of which I liked much better.

Herbert Marshall, who would become a much-respected character actor later in his career in such films as Foreign Correspondent, The Letter, and The Little Foxes was still playing romantic leads at this time. In this one, he is a charming jewel thief romancing both Miriam Hopkins as a fellow thief and Kay Francis as the lady they were both conning.

Hopkins, though praised for her performance here, was much better playing opposite Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde released ten months earlier for which March would win his first Oscar.

Francis, equally highly praised here, was also much better as William Powel’s doomed lover in Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage released just a few days before Trouble in Paradise.

Edmund Goulding’s Oscar winning Best Picture Grand Hotel starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beeery, and Lionel Barrymore was the year’s highest rated film at the time, appearing on the ten best lists of 296 publications.

Sidney Franklin’s romantic drama, Smilin’ Through starring Norma Shearer, Fredric March, and Leslie Howard, was the second highest rated film of the year, appearing on the ten best lists of 168 publications.

Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby starring Phillips Holmes, Nancy Carroll, and Lionel Barrymore, about a French soldier who killed a German soldier at the end of the First World War who turned out to be a gifted composer whose work he admired, came in in 13th place with 10 best listings in 92 publications. Trouble in Paradise came in in 19th place with listings in 56 publications and Lubitsch’s One Hour with You, a musical starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, came in in 27th place with listings in 36 publications.

In today’s rankings of the ten best films of 1932 by Films 101, Trouble in Paradise comes in at number one, followed in order by Howard Hawks’ Scarface, Jean Renoir’s Boudou Saved from Drowning, Mervyn LeRoy’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight, Tod Browning’s Freaks, Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, Goulding’s Grand Hotel, and Lubitsch’s One Hour with You.

Sadly, Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby has fallen out of favor, although to me it’s still the best Lubitsch film released that year. It was remade, equally well, by Francois Ozon as Frantz in 2016 starring Pierre Niney, Paula Beer, and Ernst Stzner in the roles played in the original by Phillips Holmes as the French musician and former soldier who seeks out the family of the man he killed, Nancy Carroll as the dead composer’s fiancé, and Lionel Barrymore as the dead man’s father whose forgiveness he seeks.

Lubitsch would go on to make such indelible films as 1934’s Design for Living with Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins, 1939’s Ninotchka with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, 1942’s To Be or Not to Be with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, and 1943’s Heaven Can Wait with Gene Tierney and Don Ameche.

Lubitsch received an honorary Oscar in early 1947 at the 1946 Academy Awards “for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture.” He died on November 30, 1947 at 55.

Acorn Media has released a 2-disc DVD of David Moore’s Murder at Evensong, the 2025 Christie-like TV series.

Set in 1988, the series centers around several murders either connected with or occurring in an old Anglican church. The central character is the church’s current rector, a young priest played by Matthew Lewis, a former child actor best remembered for several Harry Potter films.

Lewis is the priest-protagonist in this much the same way the priests in Father Brown and Grantchester as well as Josh O’Connor in the more recent Wake Up Dead Man is as he becomes one of the suspects himself.

The cast includes Amit Shah as the detective on the case, Amanda Redman (New Tricks from 2003-2013) as Lewis’ overbearing mother, and Tamzin Outhwaite, the actress who replaced Redman in Tricks for the last two seasons of the show’s run., as one of the suspects.

While there is a possibility that Murder at Evensong will become a long-running series of its own, no announcement has yet been made so enjoy the show on Acorn TV or DVD while you can.

Happy viewing.