Rating: 
Summary: Trouble in Paradise
Review: Gentleman thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall), gentlewoman thief Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and perfume heiress Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) comprise an elegant romantic triangle in a tale of amour and larceny.
They don't make `em like Ernst Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE anymore. The characters are refined and decorous, the script is sophisticated and witty, the movie is made by adults for other, intelligent adults. To paraphrase Peter Bogdanovich in his introduction - How far we have fallen! Watch, listen and read all the extras on this dvd and you too will mourn the passing of the `Lubitsch touch,' even if you're like me and still are a little unclear what exactly the `Lubitsch touch' is. Perhaps Lubitsch was a recognized auteur before there was an auteur theory. In any event, TROUBLE IN PARADISE is a (very good) cocktail-at-the-Ritz movie, and should be seen by anyone who appreciates old movies.
Also on the dvd is DAS FIDELE GEFÄNGNIS (THE MERRY JAIL) 1917, a silent film Lubitsch that must have been made before he was a genius. It's about a drunken wastrel of a husband who is summoned to spend a night in jail. Instead, he attends a party where his disguised wife plays a trick or two on him. Meanwhile one of the wife's suitors, through a series of events not worth relating, spends the night in jail in the husband's stead. The oddest character in this odd and vaguely offensive movie is the jail warder, played by Emil Jannings, whose character is potted throughout the film and spends a fair amount of time kissing and making passes at the male inmates.
The 1940 Screen Guild Theater program is a little more refreshing, especially if you're a fan of Jack Benny, who dominates the proceedings. Lubitsch plays himself in the program, as do the others - Claudette Colbert, Basil Rathbone, and Benny.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful....divine
Review: I cannot add any more to the praise heaped on this sophisticated comedy. However, for those cinephiles wondering about the picture quality: it is very grainy. By comparison, the transfer of "Rebecca" is nearly flawless, and even "The Lady Eve", which I have heard complaints about, looks relatively good. Also, the introduction with Bogdanovich is excellent and has some nice background info and photos of Lubitsch. The short film isn't much to look at, and the tributes are just written and typed, not video. A terrific film, I just wish I could have seen a less grainy version. It could have been marvelous...divine...wonderful....
Rating: 
Summary: The Meaning of Jewels
Review: I must admit, Trouble in Paradise is my first Lubitsch. Herbert Marshal plays a very suave thief predating Hitchcock's, To Catch a Thief, the Cary Grant take on Marshall's roll. Now Miriam Hopkins is an American that seems to be as suave as Marshal when she needs to impersonate a countess. They meet and discover their talents as thieves and this gets them very excited sexually.
Kay Francis, the dark haired beauty plays the rich Mariette Colet, and becomes a target of Marshal and Hopkins. While Marshal befriends Francis as a secretary, the boss-employee relationship becomes elegantly steamy. This kind of elegant love game was the height of sophistication among the very wealthy of the period. Jewels and pearls are both symbols of the desired object and perhaps bedroom toys.
This film was made in 1932 just before The Code was established. For this reason, the film nearly disappeared because the triangle between two very different women and a sophisticated rogue dramatizes clearly: they wanted to have sex with each other. Although there is no nudity, and the lovers are not shown in bed together, Lubitsch has given the film a Continental, an open sexuality, that early talkies had difficulty doing because of the puritan code in the religious United States in the 30's. Lubitsch has invented the sex comedy for talkies. Every director is indebted to him.
Rating: 
Summary: over rated
Review: I was severely disappointed by this movie and wished I had saved my money. I loved 'The shop around the Corner', but this comes nowhere close to the charm and wit in that film. The acting is stagey and unconvincing, the story tedious, the dialogue has no wit, and I found it completely uninvolving. Sorry folks, a dud.
Rating:
Summary: Tonsils!
Review: It is hard to say what exactly went wrong in the movie industry. Perhaps it was when adults decided to rent videos instead of actually going to the movies, and the studios looked around to discover the vast majority of their paying customers were under the age of twenty. Movie making is a business, after all. What could a money-strapped studio do but remake Fast Times at Ridgemont High about a million times, sliding a bit lower with each version? The ashes that remain today with regard to screen comedy are fart jokes, self proclaimed "booty meisters" mugging like demented monkeys at the site of a woman's ass, and situational concepts that make it painfully clear that the moguls are fully aware that they are selling this crap to the brain dead.
Then again, perhaps Ernst Lubitsh's Trouble in Paradise was a phantasm all along; some beautiful coincidence - like seeing a falling star out of the corner of your eye at midnight on your birthday. Whatever. To say that they don't make them like that anymore doesn't quite capture it. They must have passed legislation at some point outlawing this kind of sophistication and intelligence. I won't bore you quoting passages or praising individual performances. Suffice to say that this movie won't make you belly laugh once, but I guarantee that you will have a knowing smile on your face from beginning to end.
If you really want to be reminded of the kind of smarts you're capable of, buy this movie.
Ah, the "Lubitsh touch!" --Mykal Banta
Rating:
Summary: Continental Craziness
Review: Lubitsch's films are often described as "sophisticated," or the height of Continental elegance, but in many ways they're nothing of the sort. Remember that Lubitsch, though European, was no highbrow; he started as a slapstick comedian in German silents, and as a director, he kept a slapstick comic's ability to mock the pretentions of supposedly "sophisticated" people. Part of the appeal of a Lubitsch film is the way it combines well-mannered Continental characters with a comic sensibility that is not at all well-mannered. The actor deliver their lines with a stylized flair, but the lines themselves have the ring of the best of Broadway comedy (Lubitsch's writer, Samson Raphaelson, was imported from Broadway, and was most famous for writing play on which THE JAZZ SINGER was based). The characters try to act elegant and civilized, but Lubitsch undercuts their pretensions: The first shot of "exotic" Venice is of a singing garbageman; the "Baron" and "Countess" of the opening scenes turn out to be impostors; the world of the wealthy Mme. Colet is one of thieves and fools. The underlying sensibility is very American, and oddly close to that of a Marx Brothers movie -- the "lowbrow" crooks unmask the affectations of high society and prove to have more of a moral code than most of the "sophisticated" rich people they prey upon. The only sympathetic rich character is Mme. Colet (Kay Francis), who is sympathetic precisely because she has few pretentions. And like so many of Lubitsch's heroine, she secretly dunks donuts.Samson Raphaelson's dialogue is some of the best ever written for the screen: He can get more laughs with the single word "tonsils" than most screenwriters can get in a whole comedy script. The film is also notable for Lubitsch's use of sound and music: Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to show how effectively sound could be used to suggest things that were happening offscreen, and the music score actually follows the actors' movements, like a silent film score (people doing scores for silent movies should study this film to get an understanding of what great silent filmmakers like Lubitsch expected music to do in otherwise silent scenes). This has always been one of my favorite movies, and it deserves its reputation as a masterpiece of comedy. The print used for this DVD is not perfect -- a bit too dark in the opening scenes -- but it'll do, and it comes with the usual excellent Criterion bonuses, including a German silent film by Lubitsch (with a score that is serviceable but not really appropriate -- since the film is based on Johann Strauss's DIE FLEDERMAUS, shouldn't the score use music from Strauss's operetta?). Be sure to get the other Lubitsch/Raphaelson film available in the DVD format, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, and hope for a release of their last masterpiece, HEAVEN CAN WAIT.
Rating:
Summary: Continental Craziness
Review: Lubitsch's films are often described as "sophisticated," or the height of Continental elegance, but in many ways they're nothing of the sort. Remember that Lubitsch, though European, was no highbrow; he started as a slapstick comedian in German silents, and as a director, he kept a slapstick comic's ability to mock the pretentions of supposedly "sophisticated" people. Part of the appeal of a Lubitsch film is the way it combines well-mannered Continental characters with a comic sensibility that is not at all well-mannered. The actor deliver their lines with a stylized flair, but the lines themselves have the ring of the best of Broadway comedy (Lubitsch's writer, Samson Raphaelson, was imported from Broadway, and was most famous for writing play on which THE JAZZ SINGER was based). The characters try to act elegant and civilized, but Lubitsch undercuts their pretensions: The first shot of "exotic" Venice is of a singing garbageman; the "Baron" and "Countess" of the opening scenes turn out to be impostors; the world of the wealthy Mme. Colet is one of thieves and fools. The underlying sensibility is very American, and oddly close to that of a Marx Brothers movie -- the "lowbrow" crooks unmask the affectations of high society and prove to have more of a moral code than most of the "sophisticated" rich people they prey upon. The only sympathetic rich character is Mme. Colet (Kay Francis), who is sympathetic precisely because she has few pretentions. And like so many of Lubitsch's heroine, she secretly dunks donuts. Samson Raphaelson's dialogue is some of the best ever written for the screen: He can get more laughs with the single word "tonsils" than most screenwriters can get in a whole comedy script. The film is also notable for Lubitsch's use of sound and music: Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to show how effectively sound could be used to suggest things that were happening offscreen, and the music score actually follows the actors' movements, like a silent film score (people doing scores for silent movies should study this film to get an understanding of what great silent filmmakers like Lubitsch expected music to do in otherwise silent scenes). This has always been one of my favorite movies, and it deserves its reputation as a masterpiece of comedy. The print used for this DVD is not perfect -- a bit too dark in the opening scenes -- but it'll do, and it comes with the usual excellent Criterion bonuses, including a German silent film by Lubitsch (with a score that is serviceable but not really appropriate -- since the film is based on Johann Strauss's DIE FLEDERMAUS, shouldn't the score use music from Strauss's operetta?). Be sure to get the other Lubitsch/Raphaelson film available in the DVD format, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, and hope for a release of their last masterpiece, HEAVEN CAN WAIT.
Rating:
Summary: Continental Craziness
Review: Lubitsch's films are often described as "sophisticated," or the height of Continental elegance, but in many ways they're nothing of the sort. Remember that Lubitsch, though European, was no highbrow; he started as a slapstick comedian in German silents, and as a director, he kept a slapstick comic's ability to mock the pretentions of supposedly "sophisticated" people. Part of the appeal of a Lubitsch film is the way it combines well-mannered Continental characters with a comic sensibility that is not at all well-mannered. The actor deliver their lines with a stylized flair, but the lines themselves have the ring of the best of Broadway comedy (Lubitsch's writer, Samson Raphaelson, was imported from Broadway, and was most famous for writing play on which THE JAZZ SINGER was based). The characters try to act elegant and civilized, but Lubitsch undercuts their pretensions: The first shot of "exotic" Venice is of a singing garbageman; the "Baron" and "Countess" of the opening scenes turn out to be impostors; the world of the wealthy Mme. Colet is one of thieves and fools. The underlying sensibility is very American, and oddly close to that of a Marx Brothers movie -- the "lowbrow" crooks unmask the affectations of high society and prove to have more of a moral code than most of the "sophisticated" rich people they prey upon. The only sympathetic rich character is Mme. Colet (Kay Francis), who is sympathetic precisely because she has few pretentions. And like so many of Lubitsch's heroine, she secretly dunks donuts. Samson Raphaelson's dialogue is some of the best ever written for the screen: He can get more laughs with the single word "tonsils" than most screenwriters can get in a whole comedy script. The film is also notable for Lubitsch's use of sound and music: Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to show how effectively sound could be used to suggest things that were happening offscreen, and the music score actually follows the actors' movements, like a silent film score (people doing scores for silent movies should study this film to get an understanding of what great silent filmmakers like Lubitsch expected music to do in otherwise silent scenes). This has always been one of my favorite movies, and it deserves its reputation as a masterpiece of comedy. The print used for this DVD is not perfect -- a bit too dark in the opening scenes -- but it'll do, and it comes with the usual excellent Criterion bonuses, including a German silent film by Lubitsch (with a score that is serviceable but not really appropriate -- since the film is based on Johann Strauss's DIE FLEDERMAUS, shouldn't the score use music from Strauss's operetta?). Be sure to get the other Lubitsch/Raphaelson film available in the DVD format, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, and hope for a release of their last masterpiece, HEAVEN CAN WAIT.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, Stealing, Loving...
Review: On a moonlit evening an aristocratic man invites a woman of noble birth to his hotel suit for a late supper; however, she is observed as she enters the hotel and scandal is imminent. Meanwhile, it seems like someone has been robbed in the same hotel. The upper-class woman proclaims to the aristocratic man that he is the thief, and in return he says that he felt her hand inside the jacket when she picked his pocket. This is the beginning of the romance between two grand thieves that crosses paths with the beautiful Madame Mariette Colet who has inherited a fortune from her father. Trouble in Paradise is a witty comedy that pushes the envelop in a 1930s Hollywood in regards to sensuality and sexuality, which will charm and amuse the audience.
Rating:
Summary: A SOPHISTICATED SOUFFLE.
Review: One of Hollywood's vintage treasures. In Venice, Lily, a pickpocket posing as a countess, meets the internationally famous thief Gaston Monescu, who is posing as a baron. During an elegant dinner at their hotel, Lily politely accuses "the baron" of being a theif, and he, in turn, accuses her of being a pickpocket. He tells her he knows she stole his wallet because she tickled him when she picked his pocket; and she asks him for the time, then reveals his watch. When he, in turn, reveals her garter, she falls instantly in love with him...Naturally there is much more to this classic Lubitsch film, long considered one of the very finest sophisticated comedies ever made. Though a pre-code film, handful of lines were still called objectionable by the censors: "Oh, to hell with it" and "I like to have my fun and leave it", as spoken by the Major. The Hays Office also objected to a silent shot of C. Aubrey Smith seeming to mouth the words "Son of a b...."(!). Working titles for this film were as follows: THE HONEST FINDER, THE GOLDEN WIDOW & THEIVES AND LOVERS
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