Sedition from the Boudoir Brigadiers
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)
directed by Ernst Lubitsch
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
My consternation at the senselessness of these musicals' final acts undermines how enjoyably the other eighty minutes conspire. Here Chevalier perfects the art of the eye roll, looks down the front of Claudette Colbert's blouse, and gets himself caught up in maybe the simplest of screwball contradictions: the princess of Flausenthurm mistakes a wink aimed at Claudette for a royal come-on. Against Claudette - never prettier than here - Miriam Hopkins seems like the wrong choice for her beer garden free spirit, and even though that's the point for most of the movie, she's somehow the right choice for Niki in the end. And that's the screenplay's wrong choice, an abdication of heart as fatal as Claudette's Franzi pinning her garter to a note that reads, "It was lovely while it lasted."
Again, Design for Living and Trouble in Paradise work so well because their protagonists fail each other only to realize their mistakes in time to fix them. A movie with enough gravitas to leave Franzi in a roomful of flowers congratulating her lover on his marriage to the princess is a movie that needs to belong to Franzi. Instead, she tells Anna to "jazz up your lingerie" and then walks out of her life forever. Wrong heroine, wrong ending, however gentle the waltz in the empty room, however the camera floats to the stage just the same way your eyes see someone like Claudette Colbert light up the screen.
directed by Ernst Lubitsch
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
My consternation at the senselessness of these musicals' final acts undermines how enjoyably the other eighty minutes conspire. Here Chevalier perfects the art of the eye roll, looks down the front of Claudette Colbert's blouse, and gets himself caught up in maybe the simplest of screwball contradictions: the princess of Flausenthurm mistakes a wink aimed at Claudette for a royal come-on. Against Claudette - never prettier than here - Miriam Hopkins seems like the wrong choice for her beer garden free spirit, and even though that's the point for most of the movie, she's somehow the right choice for Niki in the end. And that's the screenplay's wrong choice, an abdication of heart as fatal as Claudette's Franzi pinning her garter to a note that reads, "It was lovely while it lasted."
Again, Design for Living and Trouble in Paradise work so well because their protagonists fail each other only to realize their mistakes in time to fix them. A movie with enough gravitas to leave Franzi in a roomful of flowers congratulating her lover on his marriage to the princess is a movie that needs to belong to Franzi. Instead, she tells Anna to "jazz up your lingerie" and then walks out of her life forever. Wrong heroine, wrong ending, however gentle the waltz in the empty room, however the camera floats to the stage just the same way your eyes see someone like Claudette Colbert light up the screen.
posted by NPK at 2:40 PM
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