Oscar Profile #151: Ernst Lubitsch

Born January 29, 1892 in Berlin, Germany to a successful tailor and his wife, Ernst Lubitsch eventually became one of the most successful international directors of all time. Expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, he chose instead to become an actor and joined Max Reinhardt’s acting troupe in 1911. He made his film debut in 1912 and appeared in more than forty films over the next eight years before turning permanently to directing.

Lubitsch directed his first film in 1914 and by 1919 had become a director of international renown with his lavish production of Madame DuBarry with two of his favorite actors, Pola Negri and Emil Jannings. Moving to Hollywood in 1922, he established himself as the pre-eminent director of sophisticated comedy with such films as 1924’s The Marriage Circle; 1925’s Lady Windemere’s Fan and 1926’s So This Is Paris. His career went into high gear with 1927’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg with Ramon Navarro and Norma Shearer and 1928’s The Patriot with Jannings and Lewis Stone, for which he received the first of his three Oscar nominations for Best Director. Sadly, that film is now lost.

Even more successful in talkies than he had been in silent, Lubittch alternated between lavish musical comedies such as 1929’s The Love Parade for which he received his second Oscar nomination; 1930’s Monte Carlo; 1931’s The Smiling Lieutenant; 1932’s One Hour With You and 1934’s The Merry Widow, most of which starred Maurice Chevalier and such ever increasing sophisticated comedies such as 1932’s Trouble in Paradise with Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins; 1933’s Design for Living with Hopkins, Fredric March and Gary Cooper; 1937’s Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Marshall and 1938’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife with Claudette Colbert and Cooper. His one dramatic film during this period, 1932’s beautifully made Broken Lullaby with Nancy Carroll, Phillips Holmes and Lionel Barrymore was such a box-office disappointment that he vowed never to make a serious film again.

Although his subsequent films may not have been serious tone, they were certainly serious in message even if the message was obscured by high comedy. Lubitch’s films from 1939 on covered such hot button topics as cold war politics in Ninotchka; infidelity by secondary characters in The Shop Around the Corner; the spread of Nazi terror in To Be or Not to Be; the hereafter in Heaven Can Wait for which he received his third Oscar nomination and the plight of post-war refugees in Cluny Brown.

Lubitsch was given an honorary Oscar at the 1946 Academy Awards for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. He died suddenly of a heart attack on November 30, 1947 at the age of 55. His last film, 1948’s That Lady in Ermine, a Betty Grable comedy, was released posthumously.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BROKEN LULLABY (1932)

Lubitsch’s anti-war polemic based on Maurice Rostand’s play was such a box-office disappointment that the director returned to musicals and comedies, vowing never again to make a straight dramatic film. Even with a title change to the sensationalistic The Man I Killed it failed to bring in audiences. It’s a pity that this film isn’t better known because it’s one of Lubitsch’s best.

Phillips Holmes stars in one of his best performances as a young French soldier who kills a German soldier near the near of World War I. Realizing that the man he killed was a classmate at a prestigious music school before the war, Holmes is filled with guilt despite having killed the man in a justified act of war. He travels to Germany to meet the dead man’s family and falls in love with his fiancée (Nancy Carroll) and is all but adopted by his parents (Lionel Barrymore and Louise Carter) before the truth comes out.

NINOTCHKA (1939)

Nominated for four Oscars, this droll comedy co-written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Billy Wilder was first offered to George Cukor who left the project when he was assigned the direction of Gone With the Wind from which he was later fired. Lubitsch agreed to step in with the caveat that be allowed to make The Shop Around the Corner next.

The film was marketed with the slogan “Garbo laughs” and audiences world-wide went to see the famed tragedienne finally let loose. She doesn’t disappoint. Garbo, under Lubitsch’s sophisticated direction, has never been better than in his romp in which she plays a no-nonsense Russian agent who melts under the charms of American Melvyn Douglas. Later musicalized as Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings which doesn’t surpass the original, this remains one of Hollywood’s great comedic gems.

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1939)

This second film version of Miklos Laszlo’s Parfumerie was the first and best of three Hollywood versions. Remade in 1949 as the musical In the Good Old Summertime and modernized for 1993’s You’ve Got Mail, it also received two highly successful mountings as the Broadway musical She Loves Me in 1963 and again in 1993.

Lubitsch’s version features the iconic teaming of Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart as employees in a gift shop in 1910 Budapest who do not get along but unbeknownst to each other are secret pen pals. Their secret identities cannot remain secret forever and the flirtations on paper soon burst into full-fledged romance. Adding to the film’s beguiling charm is a strong supporting cast led by Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Felix Bessart, Inez Courtney, William Tracy and Sara Haden as fellow shop-mates.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)

Now quite possibly Lubitsch’s best known film, this film split the critics more than any of the great director’s works. Reviled in some quarters for turning a serious world problem into a laugh out loud comedy, Lubitsch’s reduction of menacing Nazis to inept buffoons has nevertheless tickled the world’s funny bone ever since.

Jack Benny, in his best screen performance, plays a Polish actor who along with his company of players impersonates a Nazi commandant while his wife (Carole Lombard) tries to get one of the real Nazis in a compromising position. The laughs fly fast and furiously, with Hitler’s “heil myself” providing an early indication of where this is headed.

HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943)

Lubitsch received his third Oscar nomination for this stylish example of “the Lubitsch touch” which opens with a bang – literally.

Don Ameche is the old roué whose life is reviewed by the Devil who must decide if Hades is the right place for him. Gene Tierney plays his long-suffering wife; Charles Coburn and Spring Byington his parents; Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main Tierney’s parents and Laird Cregar the Devil. They’re all quite marvelous, especially Cregar. Florence Bates has a hilarious bit as another candidate for eternal damnation.