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41-602: Ernst Lubitsch ( / ˈ l uː b ɪ tʃ / ; January 29, 1892 – November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch". Among his best known works are Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around

82-737: A critical and commercial success, but director and star clashed during its filming, and it ended up as the only project that they made together. A free agent after just one American film, Lubitsch was signed to a remarkable three-year, six-picture contract by Warner Brothers that guaranteed the director his choice of both cast and crew, and full editing control over the final cut. Settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926). But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitsch's contract

123-567: A maker of worldly musical comedies (and earned himself another Oscar nomination). The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time. His next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson , Trouble in Paradise (1932). Later described (approvingly) as "truly amoral" by critic David Thomson ,

164-546: A man who was amused by sex rather than frightened of it – and who taught a whole culture to be amused by it as well. Whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount's One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933), Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy. He made only one other dramatic film, the antiwar Broken Lullaby (also known as The Man I Killed , 1932). In 1935, he

205-530: A mediocrity that all his works live up to his standard." Lubitsch died of a heart attack on November 30, 1947, in Hollywood at the age of 55. His last film, That Lady in Ermine with Betty Grable , was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously in 1948. When leaving Lubitsch's funeral, William Wyler said "No more Lubitsch." Billy Wilder responded "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures." Lubitsch

246-646: A naturalized citizen of the United States. On July 27, 1935, he married British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Anne Patricia Lubitsch, on October 27, 1938. When war was declared in Europe, Vivian Lubitsch and her daughter were staying in London. Vivian sent her baby daughter, accompanied by her nursemaid, Consuela Strohmeier, to Montreal aboard the Donaldson Atlantic Line's SS  Athenia , which

287-499: A new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry (retitled Passion , 1919) and Anna Boleyn ( Deception , 1920). Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921. They, along with Lubitsch's Carmen (released as Gypsy Blood in the U.S. in 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company and set to work on

328-565: A remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again ; an independent production by Lubitsch with Sol Lesser , it was not a commercial success. Lubitsch followed with a film that has become one of his best regarded comedies, To Be or Not to Be , a witty, dark and insightful film about a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Poland. He spent the balance of his career at 20th Century Fox , but a heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities. His next picture

369-596: A remake of his silent film Forbidden Paradise . Edwin Justus Mayer wrote the screenplay for A Royal Scandal and had worked with Lubitsch on To Be or Not to Be (1942). A Royal Scandal's pre-production and rehearsals were completed under Lubitsch, the original director of this film. He became ill during shooting, so Lubitsch hired Otto Preminger to finish the film. After A Royal Scandal , Lubitsch regained his health, and directed Cluny Brown (1946), with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones . In March 1947, Lubitsch

410-467: A sexual relationship between two women, one of whom has her eye on yet another young woman (who never appears, but who is the target of a seduction scheme). Periodically, the two women make their serving woman the butt of haughty jokes, serving to point up the satire on class. Though displaying the verbal dexterity one associates with both the playwright and the genre, the patina of wit occasionally erupts into shocking crudity. Comedies of manners have been

451-529: A somewhat Judeo-English accent). Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming has been described as a mid-twentieth-century "comedy of manners". Other more recent examples include Kazuo Ishiguro 's The Remains of the Day , Barbara Pym 's Excellent Women , Douglas Carter Beane 's As Bees in Honey Drown , The Country Club , and The Little Dog Laughed . In Boston Marriage (1999), David Mamet chronicles

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492-618: A staple of British film and television. The Carry On films are a direct descendant of the comedy of manners style, and elements of the style can be found in The Beatles ' films A Hard Day's Night and Help! . Television series by David Croft in collaboration with Jimmy Perry ( Dad's Army ) and with Jeremy Lloyd ( Are You Being Served? ) might also be considered examples of the genre. Television series such as George and Mildred , Absolutely Fabulous , The Young Ones , and The League of Gentlemen also contain many elements of

533-448: A world of formal sexual protocol. But his approach to film, to comedy, and to life was not so much ahead of its time as it was singular, and totally out of any time. In 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. He was nominated three times for Best Director . The Ernst-Lubitsch-Prize, a German Comedy prize, was established in 1958 in an effort of Billy Wilder to keep

574-601: Is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park . On February 8, 1960, Lubitsch received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion pictures industry, at 7040 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Biographer Scott Eyman attempted to characterize the famed "Lubitsch touch": With few exceptions Lubitsch's movies take place neither in Europe nor America but in Lubitschland, a place of metaphor, benign grace, rueful wisdom... What came to preoccupy this anomalous artist

615-692: Is the man she flirted with in the taxi. Mizzi later tries to seduce him. Franz loves his wife and, despite Mizzi's wiles, he never succumbs to her blandishments, even though she cleverly diverts his wife's jealousy to another woman, leaving the road clear for herself. The situation is complicated by the fact that Franz's wife is greatly admired by his medical partner, Dr. Gustav Mueller, who, though not encouraged, loses no opportunity to press his suit. Out of this entanglement, Franz finally comes clean and regains his wife's confidence, while Mizzi and Dr. Mueller turn their attention to each other, with Prof. Stock left without his divorce. According to Warner Bros. records,

656-473: The Renaissance . In the 17th century, the comedy of manners is best realised in the plays of Molière , such as The School for Wives (1662), The Imposter (1664), and The Misanthrope (1666), which satirise the hypocrisies and pretensions of the ancien régime that ruled France from the late 15th century to the 18th century. The comedy of manners has been employed by Roman satirists since as early as

697-552: The Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times for The Patriot (1928), The Love Parade (1929), and Heaven Can Wait (1943). In 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin,

738-407: The Corner ...is among the greatest of films...This is a love story about a couple too much in love with love to fall tidily into each other's arms. Though it all works out finally, a mystery is left, plus the fear of how easily good people can miss their chances. Beautifully written (by Lubitsch's favorite writer, Samson Raphaelson), Shop Around the Corner is a treasury of hopes and anxieties based in

779-454: The European talent imported by Hollywood. He had quickly developed the recognizable style of romantic comedy which came to be named after him, the pointed and patented "Lubitsch Touch," and was widely recognized by audiences and adored by critics...One major reason for the ease of Lubitsch's transition from Germany to America, and from silents to sound, was the carefully programmed way he approached

820-469: The cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences. But it was a project that could only have been made before the enforcement of the Production Code , and after 1935, Trouble in Paradise was withdrawn from circulation. It was not seen again until 1968. The film was never available on videocassette and only became available on DVD in 2003. "Lubitsch was perhaps the most successful of all

861-539: The desperate faces of Stewart and Sullavan. It is a comedy so good it frightens us for them. The café conversation may be the best meeting in American film. The shot of Sullavan's gloved hand, and then her ruined face, searching an empty mail box for a letter is one of the most fragile moments in film. For an instant, the ravishing Sullavan looks old and ill, touched by loss. Lubitsch next directed That Uncertain Feeling (1941),

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902-452: The first century BC. Horace 's Satire 1.9 is a prominent example, in which the persona is unable to express his wish for his companion to leave, but instead subtly implies so through wit. William Shakespeare 's Much Ado about Nothing might be considered the first comedy of manners In England , but the genre really flourished during the Restoration period. Restoration comedy , which

943-668: The form. The tradition of elaborate, artificial plotting, and epigrammatic dialogue was carried on by the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In the 20th century, the comedy of manners reappeared in the plays of the British dramatists Noël Coward ( Hay Fever , 1925) and Somerset Maugham . Other early twentieth-century examples of comedies of manners include George Bernard Shaw 's 1913 play Pygmalion (later adapted into

984-511: The genre. Though less common as a genre in American television, series such as Frasier , King of the Hill , Ugly Betty , Soap , and The Nanny are also comedies of manners. Larry David 's Curb Your Enthusiasm has also been described as a comedy of manners. The Marriage Circle The Marriage Circle is a 1924 American silent comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and distributed by Warner Bros. Based on

1025-523: The high-budget spectacular The Loves of Pharaoh (1921). Lubitsch sailed to the United States for the first time in December 1921 for what was intended as a lengthy publicity and professional factfinding tour, scheduled to culminate in the February premiere of Pharaoh . However, with World War I still fresh, and with a slew of German "New Wave" releases encroaching on American movie workers' livelihoods, Lubitsch

1066-475: The memory of his friend alive. Comedy of manners The comedy-of-manners genre originated in the New Comedy period (325–260 BC) of Classical Greece (510–323 BC), and is known from fragments of works by the playwright Menander , whose style of writing, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by Roman playwrights , such as Plautus and Terence , whose comedies were known to and staged during

1107-453: The musical My Fair Lady ), E. M. Forster 's A Room with a View , and the Jeeves and Wooster stories of P. G. Wodehouse . The term comedy of menace , which British drama critic Irving Wardle based on the subtitle of The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace (1958), by David Campton , is a jocular play-on-words derived from the "comedy of manners" ( menace being manners pronounced with

1148-490: The play Only a Dream by Lothar Schmidt, the screenplay was written by Paul Bern . The "circle" of the title refers to the ring of infidelities (suspected and otherwise) central to the plot. The film was remade in 1932 by Lubitsch and George Cukor as One Hour with You . In 1923 Vienna, when Mizzi threatens to leave her husband, Prof. Josef Stock, for "cruelty" for being indifferent to an invitation from her friend Charlotte to introduce them to her husband, he smiles at

1189-632: The production of his films, [creating] a blueprint for a film that was followed on the set with the precision of a great master craftsman. Perhaps only Hitchcock approached the degree of pre-planning practised by Lubitsch, an approach responsible for a good deal of the similarities in their style..."—Film historian Richard Koszarski in Hollywood Directors: 1914–1940 (1976) Writing about Lubitsch's work, critic Michael Wilmington observed: At once elegant and ribald, sophisticated and earthy, urbane and bemused, frivolous yet profound. They were directed by

1230-768: The son of Simon Lubitsch, a tailor, and Anna (née) Lindenstaedt. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish ; his father was born in Grodno in the Russian Empire (now Belarus ), and his mother was from Wriezen outside Berlin. He turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911 was a member of Max Reinhardt 's Deutsches Theater . In 1913, Lubitsch made his film debut as an actor in The Ideal Wife . He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing. He appeared in approximately 30 films as an actor between 1912 and 1920. His last film appearance as an actor

1271-486: The suggestion, which infuriates her; she changes her mind and refuses to accommodate him. She goes alone. When Prof. Stock sees his wife get into a taxi with a man, he cheers up. (He later hires a private detective to obtain proof of her misconduct for a divorce.) As it turns out, they are strangers, merely sharing the taxi. Charlotte greets Mizzi warmly and tells her how happy her marriage is, Mizzi warns her it will not last. Charlotte's husband, Franz Braun, returns home; it

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1312-441: Was Heaven Can Wait (1943), his first color film and another Raphaelson collaboration. The film is about Henry Van Cleve (played by Don Ameche ), who presents himself at the gates of Hell to recount his life and the women he has known from his mother onward, concentrating on his happy but sometimes difficult 25 years of marriage to Martha ( Gene Tierney ). After Heaven Can Wait , Lubitsch began work on A Royal Scandal (1945),

1353-431: Was appointed Paramount 's production manager, thus becoming the only major Hollywood director to run a large studio. Lubitsch subsequently produced his own films and supervised the production of films of other directors. But Lubitsch had trouble delegating authority, which was a problem when he was overseeing sixty different films. He was fired after a year on the job, and returned to full-time moviemaking. In 1936, he became

1394-554: Was awarded a Special Academy Award for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures". Presenter Mervyn LeRoy , calling Lubitsch "a master of innuendo", described some of his attributes as a filmmaker: "He had an adult mind and a hatred of saying things the obvious way." Lubitsch was the subject of several interviews at that time, and consistently cited The Shop Around the Corner as his favorite of his films. Considering his overall career, he mused "I made sometimes pictures which were not up to my standard, but then it can only be said about

1435-596: Was eventually dissolved by mutual consent, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount buying out the remainder. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), was well regarded, but lost money. The Patriot (1928), produced by Paramount, earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Directing. Lubitsch seized upon the advent of sound films to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald , Lubitsch hit his stride as

1476-464: Was in the 1920 drama Sumurun , opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener , which he also directed. In 1918, he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma ( The Eyes of the Mummy ), starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached

1517-490: Was influenced by Ben Jonson 's comedy of humours , made fun of affected wit and acquired follies of the time. The masterpieces of the genre were the plays of William Wycherley ( The Country Wife , 1675) and William Congreve ( The Way of the World , 1700). In the late 18th century Oliver Goldsmith ( She Stoops to Conquer , 1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan ( The Rivals , 1775; The School for Scandal , 1777) revived

1558-400: Was not gladly received. He cut his trip short after little more than three weeks and returned to Germany. But he had already seen enough of the American film industry to know that its resources far outstripped the spartan German companies. Lubitsch finally left Germany for Hollywood in 1922, contracted as a director by Mary Pickford . He directed Pickford in the film Rosita ; the result was

1599-484: Was promoted by studio publicists with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!" In 1940, he directed The Shop Around the Corner , a comedy of cross purposes. The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent. David Thomson wrote: The Shop Around

1640-485: Was sunk by a German submarine on September 3, 1939 with a loss of 118 passengers. The child and the nurse survived. In 1939, Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka . Garbo and Lubitsch were friendly and had hoped to work together on a movie for years, but this would be their only project. The film, co-written by Billy Wilder , is a satirical comedy in which the famously serious actress' laughing scene

1681-410: Was the comedy of manners and the society in which it transpired, a world of delicate sangfroid, where a breach of sexual or social propriety and the appropriate response are ritualized, but in unexpected ways, where the basest things are discussed in elegant whispers; of the rapier, never the broadsword... To the unsophisticated eye, Lubitsch's work can appear dated, simply because his characters belong to

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