DOWN AT THE FORUM: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNST

There will be no trouble in your movie paradise--at least not from June 13 through July 3--if you make a point of hanging out at Film Forum. That's where you can revel in a 34-film retrospective of Ernst Lubitsch gems. Fittingly, the series kicks off with the delicious "Trouble in Paradise" (shown at right). Here, courtesy of Film Forum, is a complete list of what you have to look forward to down on West Houston. For more information about "The Lubitsch Touch" and other programs, visit www.filmforum.com.

“HOW WOULD LUBITSCH HAVE DONE IT?” asked a sign above Billy Wilder’s door. Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was the first of the great European directors to establish himself in Hollywood and by far the most influential. Having made hit ribald comedies and triumphant spectacles in his native Germany, Lubitsch revolutionized American movies with a sui generis subtlety, style, visual wit, and sophisticated innuendo — “The Lubitsch Touch” (as definitive a trademark as “Master of Suspense” would be for Hitchcock), inventing the modern movie musical and romantic comedy in the process. In the 20s, 30s, and 40s, he was, with Cecil B. DeMille, the most famous director in Hollywood (in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, Veronica Lake is desperate for a screen test with Lubitsch) and, such was his prestige, the only one to retain full artistic control throughout his career. Years after Lubitsch’s death, Wilder (an up-close observer as a two-time scenarist for The Master) remarked, “For years we all tried to find the secret of ‘The Lubitsch Touch.’ If we were lucky, we’d sometimes make a film like Lubitsch. Like Lubitsch, not real Lubitsch.” --The Film Forum Program Notes

FRIDAY, JUNE 13 – THURSDAY, 19 ONE WEEK
(MATINEES ONLY MONDAY – THURSDAY)TROUBLE IN PARADISE
(1932) “Baron, I have a confession to make. You are a crook. Would you please pass the salt?” Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins share champagne, caviar, and moonlight, while debonairly picking each other’s pockets — the beginning of a beautiful partnership — but Kay Francis proves rival as well as mark.

FRI/SAT/SUN: 2:00, 3:40, 5:20, 7:00, 8:40, 10:20
MON/TUE/WED/THU: 2:00, 3:40, 5:20

JUNE 16 MON
SO THIS IS PARIS
(1926) Hilariously over-the-top Modern Dancers Lilyan Tashman and André Beranger are already looking for extracurricular action when in barges jealous, cane-wielding married doctor Monte Blue and the four-way complications begin, resolved in “an astounding Charleston sequence — a kind of cubist nightmare of what 20s people thought they were really like” (John Gillett). 70 minutes.
7:00

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
(1925) May McAvoy’s long-lost and now-notorious mom Irene Rich returns, but demands money from her aristocratic son-in-law for her silence, then tries to stymie Lord Ronald Colman’s designs on her daughter — but there’s that darn fan to be accounted for. Witty visual storytelling more than makes up for the absence of Oscar Wilde’s epigrams.
8:30


JUNE 17 TUE
THE OYSTER PRINCESS
(1919) Astonishing satire of royalism, capitalism, sex — and “foxtrot fever” — as U.S. oyster magnate’s daughter Ossi Oswalda falls for a bankrupt prince. 63 minutes.
7:00

CARMEN
(1918) Pola Negri at her lustiest, as the amoral Merimée cigar packer, in a suitably dusty, Berlin-created Spain. 52 minutes.
8:25

JUNE 18 WED
THE MAN I KILLED (Broken Lullaby)
(1931) Dogged by conscience, Frenchman Phillips Holmes treks to the home of Lionel Barrymore, father of the German soldier he killed in the War, but then romance blossoms with the dead man's fiancée, Nancy Carroll. A rare Lubitsch drama. 76 minutes.
7:00

ETERNAL LOVE
(1929) With the strikingly-shot Canadian Rockies subbing for the Alps, Swiss mountaineer John Barrymore gets reunited with true love Camilla Horn after being on opposite ends of a ménage à quatre, but that avalanche looms. Silent with original synchronized score. 90 minutes.
8:40

JUNE 19 THU
THE MOUNTAIN CAT
(1921) Amidst delightfully bizarre décor — framed by altering screen shapes — a stalwart bandit chaser falls for bandit’s daughter Pola Negri. Lubitsch’s German comedy masterpiece, “both an anti-militarist satire and a wonderful fairy tale” (John Gillett). 85 minutes.
7:00

MADAME DUBARRY (Passion)
(1919) The romance of Emil Jannings’ Louis XV with coquettish commoner Pola Negri leads to the French Revolution in the equally revolutionary epic that launched Lubitsch’s international fame and led to his exodus to Hollywood. 99 minutes.
8:50

JUNE 20/21 FRI/SAT

NINOTCHKA
(1939) GARBO LAUGHS! Bolshevik special envoy Greta Garbo keeps bumbling Paris emissaries Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski sweating borscht — until she discovers the joie du chapeau with Count Melvyn Douglas. Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. 110 minutes.
1:00, 5:10*, 9:20

Gray Horan, great-niece of Greta Garbo, will introduce the 5:10 show on Saturday, June 21.

CLUNY BROWN
(1946) Brit proprieties take a satiric beating, as romance blossoms between plumbing buff Jennifer Jones and freeloading Czech refugee Charles Boyer. 100 minutes.
3:10, 7:20

JUNE 22/23/24 SUN/MON/TUE
(MATINEE ONLY ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY)
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
(1943) Sinner Don Ameche is knockin’ on Devil Laird Cregar’s door, but does he qualify? Only flashbacks will tell in superbly mellow fantasy of low-key 19th century playboy, blessed with understanding wife Gene Tierney. 112 minutes.
SUN: 1:05, 5:05, 8:55
MON/TUE: 1:05, 5:05

IF I HAD A MILLION
(1932) Lubitsch was the very top of the seven top directors recruited for this omnibus picture about a dying millionaire (Richard Bennett, father of Joan & Constance) who chooses his heirs at random from the phone book, recipients including W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Frances Dee, and, in the memorable Lubitsch sequence, hapless clerk Charles Laughton. 88 minutes.
SUN: 3:15, 7:10
MON/TUE: 3:15


JUNE 23 MON
THE DOLL
(1919) Puppeteer’s daughter Ossi Oswalda impersonates a mechanical doll to woo a baron’s nephew, with Lubitsch pulling the strings in a prologue. Plus Meyer in Berlin (1919), with director Lubitsch as a go-getting schlmiel. 109 minutes total.
7:15

ANGEL
(1937) Marlene Dietrich, feeling neglected by treaty-obsessed diplomat hubbie Herbert Marshall, anonymously dallies with Melvyn Douglas, but guess who’s the “old friend” Marshall later brings home? 93 minutes.
9:15

JUNE 24 TUE
KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTER
(1920) Dual-roled Henny Porten and lunkhead Emil Jannings re-play Taming of the Shrew in the Bavarian Alps. Plus I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1919): Ossi Oswalda tries a night on the town in drag. 108 minutes total.
7:15

LOVES OF PHAROAH
(1922) Emil Jannings’ passion for a commoner creates havoc; perhaps Lubitsch’s most opulent spectacle. Plus the recently re-discovered When I Was Dead (1915), starring director Lubitsch in a rare straight role.
9:20

JUNE 25 WED

ONE HOUR WITH YOU
(1932, CO-DIRECTED BY GEORGE CUKOR) When Jeanette MacDonald realizes visiting friend Genevieve Tobin is putting the moves on doctor hubbie Maurice Chevalier, she decides “what’s sauce for the goose...,” even as Tobin’s spouse Roland Young is bringing in the private detectives. Remake of Lubitsch’s silent The Marriage Circle. Restored color-tinted print. 80 minutes.
2:00, 5:30, 9:00

THE SMILING LIEUTENANT(1931) Roguish lieutenant Maurice Chevalier loves violinist Claudette Colbert but gets trapped into marrying checkers-playing princess Miriam Hopkins. But things look up when good sport Colbert musically advises frumpish Hopkins to “Jazz Up Your Lingerie.” 88 minutes.
3:40, 7:10


JUNE 26/27/28 THU/FRI/SAT

TO BE OR NOT TO BE
(1942) “So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt!” gloats Gestapo man Sig Rumann to a masquerading Jack Benny — in reality Joseph Tura, “that great, great Polish actor” — then proceeds to criticize Benny’s Hamlet: “What you did to Shakespeare, we’re doing to Poland.” Criticized in its time for abominable taste, but now considered one of the director’s supreme masterpieces. With Carole Lombard in her final role, as Benny’s almost-straying wife. 99 minutes.
1:20, 5:20, 9:20

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER
(1940) In Frank Morgan’s Budapest emporium, clerks James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan (“a peerless performance” — Kael) battle in person without realizing they’ve been carrying on a lonelyhearts romance by mail. “Close to perfection — one of the most beautifully acted and paced romantic comedies.” – Pauline Kael. 99 minutes.
3:20, 7:20

JUNE 29/30 SUN/MON
THE MERRY WIDOW
(1934) Chevalier-MacDonald-Lubitsch redux, for the ultimate production of the Lehar operetta, out-lavishing even Von Stroheim’s silent version, and complete with streamlined lyrics by Lorenz Hart, hilarious support from Edward Everett Horton and Una Merkel, and the grandest of grand balls. 99 minutes.
SUN: 1:20, 5:20, 9:20
MON: 1:00, 5:00

THE STUDENT PRINCE (in Old Heidelberg)
(1927) Crown prince Ramon Novarro, happy at last as simple Heidelberg student, and in love with innkeeper’s niece Norma Shearer, must renounce all for the throne. Lubitsch for once eschewed sly innuendo for a tender evocation of lost young love, creating the impossible: a silent operetta. 105 minutes.
SUN: 3:20, 7:20
MON: 3:00

JUNE 30 MON
ROMEO AND JULIET IN THE SNOW
(1920) Alpine treatment of Shakespeare, complete with happy ending twist. 44 minutes.
7:10

ANNA BOLEYN
(1920) Jannings’ tour-de-force as Henry VIII highlights the most impressive of Lubitsch’s spectacles. Plus trailer for Lubitsch’s lost The Patriot (1928).
8:10


JULY 1 TUE
THE LOVE PARADE
(1929) “In all of Sylvania, there’s only one leg as good as this one,” boasts queen Jeanette MacDonald, uncovering one gam — “and that’s it!” she says, flashing the other. But even though count Maurice Chevalier is her “Dream Lover,” he still complains “Nobody is using it now” in Lubitsch’s first sound triumph. 107 minutes.
3:20, 7:15

MONTE CARLO
(1930) On the run from her wedding, negligée-clad Countess Jeanette MacDonald trills “Beyond the Blue Horizon” in tune with the Blue Express that’s taking her to Monte Carlo, and to count-pretending-to-be-a-hairdresser Jack Buchanan (his only other U.S. film: The Band Wagon) with their “Give Me a Moment, Please” telephone duet a further highlight. 90 minutes.
1:30, 5:25, 9:15

JULY 2/3 WED/THU
(MATINEE ONLY ON THURSDAY)
DESIGN FOR LIVING
(1933) Ménage à trois à Paris, as commercial artist Miriam Hopkins shacks up with both struggling playwright Fredric March and undiscovered painter Gary Cooper. Noel Coward was reportedly delighted with Ben Hecht’s adaptation, though the latter chortled that he left only two lines of the original. 90 minutes.
WED: 3:40, 7:10
THU: 2:40


BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE
(1938) In classic “meeting cute,” American millionaire Gary Cooper and impoverished Claudette Colbert buy, respectively, the top and bottom of the same pair of pj’s; but after love blossoms, she finds he’s a seven-time divorcé. First screenwriting collaboration of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. With David Niven, Edward Everett Horton. 80 minutes.
WED: 2:00, 5:30, 9:00
THU: 1:00, 4:30

JULY 3 THU
ROSITA
(1923) Duel of the titans: Lubitsch, making his first Hollywood picture, matched wits with producer Mary Pickford, starring as a fiery Spanish street singer who catches the eye of a lecherous king. 103 minutes.
7:00

THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE
(1924) Doctor Monte Blue is happily married to Florence Vidor, Professor Adolphe Menjou is unhappily married to Marie Prevost — who decides to chase Blue — while Blue’s partner is hoping for an affair with Vidor — and then things really get complicated. 80 minutes.
9:00