Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch (Berlin, January 29, 1892-Los Angeles, California, November 30, 1947) was a German-Jewish film director, born in Germany, naturalized already in 1933 American where he had emigrated. His versatility as a filmmaker was remarkable; he mastering comedy, drama, tragedy, farce or spectacle.

Biography

Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin. He was the son of Simon Lubitsch, owner of a prosperous tailor shop, whose family had Ashkenazi Jewish roots, and who was born in Grodno; his mother was born in Wriezen (Oder), outside of Berlin. Simón wanted to guide Ernst towards the family business.

He studied Lubitsch at the Sophien Institute in Berlin, but since he was a teenager he has done theater performances. At the age of 16 he started working as an actor (although he helped his father). What's more, without reaching the age of twenty, he began acting in Max Reinhardt's theater from 1911 (the Deutsches Teather); and he already played with that company the role of Wagner from Faust , which circulated with the company in London, Paris and Vienna. In 1912 he entered the cinema as a prop for the Bioscope.

In 1913 he created a Jewish comic character for different short films that he wrote and directed. From 1914 to 1922, he shot about fifty films of different lengths. He made his first trip to the United States in 1921, and attended the filming of The Two Orphans by Griffith.

In the United States, he then continued a brilliant career, both in silent and sound films, from 1922. He would stand out especially in the musical genre, and the best of his work will be comedy films.

He was a supervisor at Paramount, which he took advantage of to offer his first opportunity to promising youngsters fleeing Europe in the face of Nazi anti-Semitism, such as Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger.

Work

He had already successfully filmed, in 1918, The Mummy's Eyes, Meyer of Berlin and Carmen (according to Merimée); in 1919, The Oyster Princess, Madame Du Barry (with great success) and The Doll; in 1920, Romeo and Juliet , The Brewer's Daughters , Sumurun (where she was acting) and Anne Boleyn . The following year she shot The Wildcat and The Pharaoh's Woman , whose great success earned her a trip to California. He was widely interviewed and spoke highly of Chaplin. Returning to Berlin, and fed up with historical cinema, he made a chamber drama Montmartre (Die Flamme , 1922).

He moved to the United States at the age of 30, an accomplished teacher. His first four feature films were remarkably successful, leading actress Mary Pickford to offer him a contract in Hollywood. Of the first stand out in 1923 Rosita; in 1924, The dangers of flirtation and The frivolity of a lady; in 1925 Let's Divorce and especially a masterpiece for its subtlety, Lady Windemere's Fan. In 1928, he shot The Patriot and made his last silent film in 1929: Eternal Love, romantic and visually beautiful.

Then, until his nationalization in 1933, he made Monte Carlo (1930), The Seductive Lieutenant (1931); an anti-war drama, Remorseful (1932), which is considered his masterpiece; and other comedies, such as An hour with you, A thief in the bedroom, If I had a million (episode), all in 1932, and the following year A woman for two.

She was part of the Hollywood star-system model. Once in the United States, he established himself with the so-called "refined comedy" of which he is considered the founder. In this same subgenre (within classic American comedy), he directed the famous satire against absurd Soviet rigidity Ninotchka (1940), and later the scathing anti-Nazi satire To be or not to be (1943), but intertwined with his scheme of matrimonial love deceit, which was his guide. He later shot The Devil Said No (1943), The Sin of Cluny Brown (1946) and The Lady with the Stoat (1948), which could no longer finish.

His work has been characterized by a special ironic mode, the so-called «Lubitsch touch», which he used not only to bypass censorship, but also to complicate the plot, to have fun, to make situations ambiguous. Nobody has defined it in a very concrete way, because it does not exist, he said. An example of this method would be in Trouble in paradise (1932) in which we are allowed to intuit an infidelity with doors that open and close. It has been said that that touch is a way of narrating that possesses "the subtle ingredients of irony, pathos, bitterness and laughter, all rolled into one; very often it is sarcasm that is more psychic than visual that stems from an impossible situation that could degrade the hero or disqualify the genius".

Lubitsch's aesthetics

Scripts

Lubitsch simply shot a single film in which the script was original to him (To be or not to be). The rest have been adaptations normally from plays. His preference in authors were Hungarians who wrote dramas such as Laszlo Aladar ( Trouble in Paradise ) or Melchior Lengyel ( Ange, Ninotchka ). But even so, his favorite screenwriter was Samson Raphaelson who commented that Lubitsch liked to improvise while he wrote.

He was also influenced by German writers such as Hans Müller, Leopold Jacobson and Felix Dortman from the novel The Smiling Lieutenant and French writers such as Léon Xanrof and Jules Chancel The Love Parade.

Music

Music is a really important element in Lubitsch's films as it accompanies the word. For many of his silent films, Lubitsch had unique scores composed for them, although many of these have been lost.

In Angel, the use of music is especially important. Due to the violinist's melodic improvisation, the night Lady Baker and Anthony Halton meet precipitates the action: Baker plays it on the piano, making her husband believe that it is his own composition, but he listens on the phone as Halton also plays it. touch.

Oscar Straus is an operatic author who is also one of the composers involved in Lubitsch's films. In fact, Lubitsch began with a film version of one of his operas from 1907 ( The Smiling Lieutenant ) and later contacted him to compose the music for One Hour With You.

Friedrich Hollaender is a German composer who will write the score for Desire and Angel.

To finish, Werner R. Heymann, a darker musician but one who lends himself quite well to cinematographic language, will compose the music for four Lubitsch films: Ninotchka, The shop around the corner, That uncertain feeling and To be or not to be.

Touch Lubitsch

The Lubitsch Touch is called the "ability that the German filmmaker had to suggest more than what he showed". It consists of the intelligence of the spectator, since the director suggests a concept, he is the spectator who comes to imagine it through this suggestion.

The Lubitsch Touch was a concept that many people knew about, but no one could explain. Only Ernst Lubitsch knew exactly what it consisted of.

This resource, called Lubitsch Touch, consists of an elegant and sophisticated plot composition that ended up heading towards irony. He is characterized by his ability to suggest what he could not show explicitly, thus forcing the viewer to imagine what Lubitsch himself is trying to show. The objective was to prevent his films from being censored, so there was a very subtle eroticism behind them, which gave the films a light appearance, but deep down they had a great moral and social commitment.

A clear example where the Lubitsch Touch can be appreciated is in To Be or Not to Be (1943), a film in which Lubitsch recounted the adventures of a theater company in Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

Filmography

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards