Sunday, March 19, 2006
Ernst Lubitsch is one of those directors whose name I hear so often that I assume I've seen most of his movies, especially because one of his films, The Shop Around the Corner (1940), I love enough to own. So there's a familiarity with him, or so I thought. After scrolling through his director filmography on IMDb I realized I had actually only seen two of the 73 films to his credit: the aforementioned The Shop Around the Corner, and Trouble in Paradise (1932).
This was the second time I have seen Trouble in Paradise, and I think it's better with time. There is a witty nuance in the delivery of characters' speech that adds to the depth of Lubitsch's humor, but the real emphasis is on gesture and movement. In this movie it's interesting to see how the two kleptomaniac lovers court each other through pickpocketing; the choreography of their hands slipping out of purses and pockets to reveal a wallet or jewelry is titillating magic for them.
The characters are bored with small talk that pervades the high-class social world they snake themselves into. So they navigate their way through it by thievery, which proves more interesting than the fakeness of their company's social graces. The two thieves, Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and Gaston (Herbert Marshall) prevail in the end because they are conscious of the vapid talk and manner of the socialites they steal from. It doesn't matter that their grand plan is figured out, but that they escaped this dull world of prim etiquette unscathed, and with a nice wad of cash.
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