A Fine Pair of Silent Sex Farces from Ernst Lubitsch
DIRECTED BY ERNST LUBITSCH/1919; 1918
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: AUGUST 15, 2023/KINO CLASSICS
François Truffaut, we’re told, once wrote, “In the Lubitsch Swiss cheese, each hole winks.” That’s as sensible a way of putting it as anything, I suppose. One is tempted to proclaim, however, that there’s nothing cheesy about the pair of early silent German comedies that share this fine double feature release from Kino Classics, but by Truffaut’s complimentary intent, that simply wouldn’t be true at all. Best to simply dive straightaway into the Lubitsch titles at hand, 1919’s The Doll and 1918’s I Don’t Want to Be a Man…
The Doll
“For bachelors, widowers, and misogynists!” That boast, thankfully is not the tagline of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1919 comedy The Doll (Die Puppe). It is, however, the tagline for the actual lifelike automaton of female likeness and intimate function featured in said film.
Perhaps even more so than most Lubitsch stories (which almost always occur elsewhere), The Doll takes place in a time and place seemingly all its own. We find ourselves thrust into some indeterminate point during the Middle Ages with a reluctant bachelor (Hermann Thimig), an eccentric inventor (Victor Janson), a malfunctioning life size sex doll, and a girl that looks just like the sex doll (Lubitsch favorite of this era, The Oyster Princess star, Ossi Oswalda). Egads, where to begin…?
Beginning at the beginning is as good a place as any… We meet young bachelor Lancelot, whose father, the Baron of Chanterelle (Max Kronert), insists he get married. Gun-shy and preferring the company of religious monks, Lancelot decides to fool his father by marrying the lifelike doll. (The notion of such a lifelike doll being much to the interest of the monks, who in fact already know about such automatons…). But little does Lancelot know that in the workshop, a pervy young boy broke his doll, leading Ossi, the eccentric inventor’s adventurous daughter, to secretly assume the role of the doll. So, we have a woman doubling for an automaton that is being passed off as a real woman by a guy who desperately doesn’t want to get married. Leave it to Lubitsch to concoct such a deliciously tangled noodle of a movie in only seventy quick minutes.
Believe it or not there’s a surprisingly long lineage preceding this adaptation. Per its Wikipedia entry, The Dollis “based on the operetta La poupée by Edmond Audran (1896) with a line of influence back through the Léo Delibes ballet Coppélia (1870) and ultimately to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short story “Der Sandmann” (1816).” I’m sure Lubitsch’s take honors all of them in its uniquely nutty rendition. From the start, he uniquely makes it his own as he, playing himself, unloads from a toy box and arranges miniature scenery and figurines that become the fantastical world of the movie. He literally sets the scene…
The wide-eyed wonder Ossi, a frequent collaborator with Lubitsch, smartly utilizes her ballet dancing skills in her portrayal. That her character’s name is also “Ossi” signals that Lubitsch happily understood how her very specific blend of charisma, studied movement, and witty attitude can drive this movie. (Which it does). There’s a demented enthusiasm in her character’s willing adventurousness, making the whole thing consistently absorbing by extension. The Doll is a fully satisfying and always intelligent sex farce that is never dehumanizing.
Once again, Joseph McBride, author of the critical study How Did Lubitsch Do It? provides newly recorded audio commentary on both films, and once again, these are brilliant contributions. It’s in many ways a combination of a university-level lecture and a stream-of-conscious ramble. While it’s possible that McBride, in his deep admiration for Lubitsch, gives the filmmaker too much credit (did Lubitsch really invent the movie musical and the onscreen romantic comedy? Or did he merely redefine them for all time?), he knows the director and his work better than most anyone. That’s why Kino keeps wisely bringing him onboard to chat us up though all their Lubitsch films.
Naughty, crass, bawdy, The Doll is a whip-smart fantasy farce that operates on levels of knowing artifice that the filmmaker’s later Hollywood efforts (such as The Shop Around the Corner, To Have and Have Not, and Ninotchka) steered clear of. McBride shares the observation that The Doll is every bit as stylistically Expressionistic as Caligari, though comedies rarely get considered as such. In this one, the toy chest has come to life in such a way that horses are depicted by two people sharing a horse suit. Lubitsch could’ve gotten real horses. But this is funnier, and so much more fantastical.
Similarly in terms of exaggerated reality (if less zany) is a bit where a dozen or so women chase Lancelot hoping to nab him in betrothal. McBride discusses Lubitsch’s comedy notion that the more women that are chasing the man, the funnier it is. This predates Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, famous for showcasing a similar, heightened version of the gag, by several years.
Now available on Blu-ray from Kino Classics as the top half of a silent Lubitsch comedy double bill, The Dollsports an impressive (for its age) visual presentation. Particularly eye catching are the film’s original German intertitles in bright mint green old-world text (with standard English subtitles below them). The musical score is composed and performed by Meg Morley.
I Don’t Want to be a Man
One might guess that this film’s title, I Don’t Want to Be a Man, is a glimpse at where this brazen genderqueer comedy finally gets off. And in that, one would be correct. Going in, it’s helpful to know that like this Blu-ray’s main feature, which came only one year later, The Doll, this similarly silent Lubitsch comedy stars his leading lady of choice in this era, Ossi Oswalda. Even more mischievous than her character is in The Doll, Ossi sports a sharp rebellious streak in this one. At only forty-five minutes in length, I Don’t Want to be a Man may not qualify as a full feature, but rest assured that Ossi’s flapper-esque charm is fully featured.
Unhappy being confined to the strictures of polite society, Ossi (once again brandishing her real-life Lubitsch-given nom de plume on screen) decides to reinvent herself as a fella. Her top hat and tails routine is enough to fool everyone she meets and to prefigure Marlene Dietrich’s daring crossdressing in Morocco (1930), but we never lose sight of her sly self. Although I Don’t Want to Be a Man is surprisingly progressive by quite some distance, the film is all about showcasing how Ossi learns the hard way that men are bruising brutes with one another. No thank you, she decides! But not before a drunken smooch-fest with an admiring doctor (Curt Goetz). The real zinger is that they get all kissy and cuddly while she’s still maintaining her mannish identity. (!)
Like The Doll (and every other Lubitsch title Kino Classics puts out), has an audio commentary by Lubitsch expert Joseph McBride. And like McBride’s other commentaries, it’s well worth the time and attention of anyone looking for deeper Lubitsch learning. Not here but on his track for the accompanying film, The Doll, McBride casually mentions that “Aristotle wrote that comedy is about human vice, and mocks said vice”. That’s one theory. Is Lubitsch mocking vice so much as exploiting the perils of conformity to societal rigidity? In the case of both I Don’t Want to Be a Man and The Doll, good natured female-led deception has its way with their respective patriarchal superstructure, which is entirely deserving of such treatment. These films are hilarious proof that Lubitsch cheese didn’t stink, and over 100 years before Barbie and the like, he truly had the touch.