The Lubitsch Touch

Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), the director of NINOTCHKA, is somewhat unknown today as a filmmaker. Many film fans know him only as the dream director that Veronica Lake pines to work with in Preston Sturges' classic SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS. In fact, Lubitsch is one of the most important, and influential, filmmakers of the 20th century. His work in Hollywood set the standard for the sophisticated sex comedy that Cecil B DeMille began in the silent era but did not reach its full potential until Lubitsch’s early sound films in the 1930s and '40s. But his influence spans further back, when he began making silent films in Germany in the 1910s.

Lubitsch was one of the key figures in the Weimar Cinema after World War I in Germany. At that time, he was associated with the lavish epic historical films that Germany was famous for producing during that period. His breakthrough as a filmmaker came in 1919, with the grand MADAME DUBARRY. That film was released in the U.S. by First National in the U.S. as PASSION, and it was the first hugely successful European import in the United States after the Great War; according to film history Anthony Henry Guzman, "PASSION'S success and First National's huge profits single-handedly changed the American film industry attitude towards the European cinema." Along with the much less successful but now better-remembered THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, PASSION proved to American distributors and exhibitors that European films, and especially German films, could produce large box-office receipts. During the 1920s, a new era of European film importation gave rise to the still-held belief that European films were more artistically ambitious and sophisticated than their Hollywood counterparts, creating an "art cinema" designation that persists to this day. It is thus as a result of PASSION'S success that other European films were shown in the United States. Were it not for Lubitsch's film, the U.S. may never have seen films like Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS or M, F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU or THE LAST LAUGH, and many other European silent and early sound films that are now heavily present in the canon of film classics.

After more success in the historical epic genre with pictures like ANNA BOLEYN (released in the U.S. as DECEPTION) and CARMEN (GYPSY BLOOD), Lubitsch emigrated to Hollywood in 1922. Lubitsch was one of the first in a trend of Europeans moving to Hollywood which influenced other great filmmakers and actors like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Karl Freund, Peter Lorre, Ingrid Bergman, and Greta Garbo, who is the star of Lubitsch's NINOTCHKA. Once in Hollywood, Lubitsch worked for Warners making silent comedies. At the cusp of the sound era, he left the smaller WB studio and was picked up in a joint agreement with MGM and Paramount. For these companies Lubitsch started making musical comedies, including the masterpieces THE LOVE PARADE and THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, both featuring superstar Maurice Chevalier (also a recent émigré from Europe). These films were wildly successful, earning award nominations and firmly establishing the popular musical genre as something that could be more than the stagnant, recorded theatre that earlier films of that type were.

After his musical phase, Lubitsch began working in the genre that he is best remembered for now, the sex comedy. Films like TROUBLE IN PARADISE, THE MERRY WIDOW, BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE, and DESIGN FOR LIVING were daring, sophisticated, and hilarious farces that demonstrated a mastery of mise en scène, social satire, and the art of the double entendre to an extent previously unseen in the cinema. Lubitsch's knack for playing with sex moved his protégé Billy Wilder to famously say that Lubitsch "could do more with a closed door than most directors could do with an open fly." These films are marked with what many critics and scholars have called the "Lubitsch Touch." The Lubitsch Touch is the director's trademark, an intangible quality in his films that forces his audience to add things up for themselves, often to unexpected ends.

Lubitsch's influence as a comic director and writer is often stated most firmly towards Billy Wilder, arguably the greatest and most celebrated comic filmmaker in Hollywood history. Wilder worked as a screenwriter with Lubitsch on BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE and NINOTCHKA before breaking out as a director and making some of the great classics of American cinema, including DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BLVD., SOME LIKE IT HOT, and THE APARTMENT. Wilder's style is clearly reminiscent of Lubitsch's sense of humor and sophisticated, worldly approach to filmmaking. In fact, Wilder had a sign posted in his office throughout his career that read: "How Would Lubitsch Do It?" Aside from his influence on Wilder, Lubitsch's style can also be seen in the films of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Woody Allen, Otto Preminger, and countless others.

His unique perspective and wit helped to define what the Hollywood comedy would be during Hollywood's Golden age of the 1930s-1950s. Ernst Lubitsch, and the Lubitsch Touch, pervades our most basic understanding of what American movies are, whether we know it or not. His career was wildly successful both in crafting U.S. expectation of European film as well as in defining the Hollywood comedy. NINOTCHKA, one of his best loved films, demonstrates all of Lubitsch's greatness and, most importantly, will make you laugh.