The Lubitsch Touch

LACMA is in the midst of a four week program showing the films of Ernst Lubitsch, the master of the romantic comedy, a genre that has been a mainstay of Hollywood movies since they began to flicker.


Old school cranks like me wish that more contemporary filmmakers would review the Lubitsch library and learn just a bit of “The Lubitsch Touch”.


His ‘touch’ forbade coarseness in any part of his productions. The plot, dialogue, motivations, themes all had to be elegantly thought out, polished, coherent. Words like “sloppy,” “crass,” or “gross,” couldn’t be used to critique any of his movies. Even his pre-code movies showed a sophisticated view of sex and relationships. The battle of the sexes in Lubitsch films is fought with passion, wit, suggestion, tantalizing comic tension — but never with mean spirited nastiness.


Maurice Zolotow, in his biography of Billy Wilder (“Billy Wilder In Hollywood", Putnam 1977) writes of Lubitsch:


“He was a believer in a well-made screenplay and he didn’t start shooting until the screenplay was perfect. Lubitsch never improvised on a set — nor allowed his actors to utter spontaneous lines. He choreographed each word and gag. He made sure that there was not a single superfluous detail in the script, Once, B.P. Schulberg, then Paramount’s head of production, asked him why he was shooting a scene in a certain way, and he replied that he couldn’t remember exactly why at the moment, 'but it is in the script, which is good enough for me. If I didn’t have a good reason, it would not have been there when *Sam Raphaelson was writing it in the first place.'"


(*Samson Raphaelson writer on 9 Lubitsch films, including "The Merry Widow", "Shop Around The Corner", "Heaven Can Wait", and also Hitchcock’s "Suspicion".)


One of the best is “Design For Living”. Skirting the era of the Code, the movie drastically adapts Noel Coward’s play about a menage a trois among a writer (Fredric March), artist (Gary Cooper), and their muse (Miriam Hopkins). Ben Hecht’s screenplay downplays Coward’s homoerotic suggestions, keeps the eyebrow raising notion that marriage is not the only permissible alternative for relationships. He allows Lubitsch to keep the titillating hetero situations afloat as the three Bohemians assert their desire to preserve a “gentleman’s agreement” of no sex.


The movie’s wisdom about such an idealistic fantasy — which makes it a worthy guide for the 60's renewal of the Bohemian ideal of communal relations — is that it won’t work. But Lubitsch juggles the lovers so deftly that it seems like great fun. When the girl caves in the inevitable, she sprawls languidly on a divan, sighs, “unfortunately, I’m no gentleman.” Of course, the triangle plays out to its logical extremes.


Another pre-code Lubitsch treasure is “Trouble In Paradise”. Herbert Marshall, a thief, combines with soulmate, Miriam Hopkins, to steal from socialite Kay Francis. Marshall falls for Kay and Lubitsch creates subtle scenes suggesting liaisons as George gropes with his choices.


The fact that Lubitsch survived the strictures of The Code is instructive. The Touch thrived with the kind of subtle innuendo that The Code could not repress. “The Shop Around The Corner” is a sweetly innocent love story set in a Hungarian store. The head clerk (James Stewart) and the new girl he reluctantly hires (Margaret Sullavan) disagree about almost everything. Each sees the other as unromantic, although each has been writing anonymous love letters to a secret admirer. If you saw the remake, “You’ve Got Mail” you get the idea.


During the war, his anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be Or Not To Be” proved to be Carole Lombard’s last movie. The story of that movie was credited to Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian born screen writer, who also had the idea for Lubitsch’s masterpiece, "Ninotchka".


According to Zolotow, the inspiration came in true Hollywood style — over lunch, at the Brown Derby, no less. Lengyel met Salka Viertel there. She was Greta Garbo’s companion and advisor, mentioned to Lengyel that MGM was looking for a comedy that could revive Garbo’s career, so they could trumpet “Garbo Laughs” the way they hyped “Garbo Talks.”


The next day, he called her with an idea. She invited him to tell it to Garbo. At the pool, where Garbo was swimming in the nude, he said, “‘Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance, and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism is not no bad, after all.’ MGM paid him $15,000 for these three sentences.” (Zolotow, p. 79).


Also in typical Hollywood style, Viertel and Lengyel’s script of his idea was rejected. The first director assigned, resigned. Jacques Deval, who wrote “Tovarich” a comedy about Russian aristocrats in Paris tried his hand. S.N. Behrman’s draft created the shell of a plot about a Russian commissar and French gigolo. She comes to Paris to sell nickel ore.


Garbo asked for Lubitsch, on loan from Paramount. He admired her acting, brought on Walter Reisch, a contract MGM writer, and his people, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, to create a polished script worthy of a Lubitsch picture. According to Zolotow, it was Lubitsch’s notion to have her come to Paris to sell with Czarist jewels, previously owned by a dutchess living in Paris with her lover, the gigolo who is going to fall for Ninotchka. Diamonds, Lubitsch said, were more cinematic than nickel ore.


Which brings us to another of the aspects of the Lubitsch Touch that is not often acknowledged. Like many artists of the 1930's, Lubitsch wanted his movies to have “social significance.” But unlike Frank Capra, Lubitsch (abetted by Wilder) would treat the “issues” with subtlety and wit. Ninotchka is a satire of Soviet seriousness. Gags touch upon news items familiar to all movie goers. Stalin’s purges — “there are going to be fewer but better Russians.” The five year plan — “I’ve followed your five year plans for the past fifteen years.”


Zolotow argues that Lubitsch (born in Germany to Russian Jewish parents), like most of his peers, was mildly communist or at least leftist during the era. However, Lubitch in the early 30's had traveled to Russia and returned after three weeks, refusing to speak about his visit. After that, he had withdrawn from pro-Soviet committees that were popular then. Zolotow argues that after Lubitsch’s time in Stalinist Russia, he no longer had the illusions of his peers. Ironically, the movie’s success derived partly from the coincidence of the Nazi non-aggression pact shortly preceding the movie’s release in 1939.


Zolotow also remarks on the circumstances of Lubitsch’s death in 1947. He had a fatal heart attack in the shower. A famous Hollywood story is that Billy Wilder arrived shortly after the death and found a woman there, sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to soothe her, but finally reverted to his somewhat sardonic character. “Look,” he said, “he was almost a father to me, but I’m not crying.” The woman said “Sure, he didn’t fuck you and die before he paid you.” Wilder paid her the $50. Of course, Zolotow reports, Wilder denied the story. “‘The chauffeur paid her.’” (Zolotow, p.85).