Based on a play by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy, Ernst Lubitsch's So This is Paris is the first time his writing partnership with Hans Kraly bore good fruit. A light comedic farce, a genre that Lubitsch obviously liked to tell stories in, it's the sort of film that is a trifle and a confectionary creation, a film of wit that doesn't ask for too much from its audience, choosing to be pleasing and delightful over anything else. I feel that some parts of it would fall apart, especially morally, if you considered it too deeply, reminding me of Lubitsch's protégé and acolyte Billy Wilder's first film The Major and the Minor.
Doctor Paul Giraud (Monte Blue) is married to Suzanne (Patsy Ruth Miller). Across the street moves in a pair of actors, Maurice (Andre Beranger) and Georgette Lalle (Lilyan Tashman). They are practicing a routine dealing with Arabia where they dress in Arabian outfits just as Suzanne is finishing up a steamy romantic novel set in Arabia. She sees this man in foreign looking attire (without a shirt) across the way and gets all worked up at the sight. It's so bad that Paul goes to the apartment to tell them off for such indiscretion when he realizes that he knows Georgette. They were an item some time ago, long before either of them got married, and she tries to make a pass at him, which he shuts down. When Paul comes back home, he puts on a small show for Suzanne, talking about how he got into a tussle with Maurice, breaking the man's cane in the process, in a show of strength for his wife's honor and decency. This is undone when Maurice shows up at the door, complete with intact cane, and immediately hits on Suzanne while Paul is in the other room, resting after his "ordeal" where he hears everything in the other room.
So sets the stage that the couple of actors use their time to try and get romantically involved, individually, with their neighbors across the courtyard. The joys of the film are in the lies that the "good" couple tell each other to continue down these potentially indiscrete paths with other married people, like when Georgette calls the apartment hoping to get Paul. Instead, she gets Suzanne and tells her that Paul must come to a café where a man is very sick. Believing it is true, Paul drives as fast as he can, getting caught for speeding by a police officer who lets him go in order to save a dying man, only to catch up again to witness Paul and Georgette laughing outside the café. This leads to Paul getting sentenced to three days in jail.
The big finale of the film is centered around the Artists' Ball. Paul is determined to go with Georgette. Maurice is determined to visit Suzanne while Paul is out. There's a bit with mistaken identity that leads to the wrong man going to jail and Paul and Georgette winning the Charleston dance contest which gets announced on the radio that Suzanne is listening to. Is Paul trying to cheat on Suzanne with Georgette? It's not entirely clear, but it probably has more to do with him trying to get back at Suzanne for his perception that she was willingly falling in for Maurice's seductions.
The movie's lack of seriousness is really what sells the film overall. It's got this light and airy tone as it moves from one little domestic event to the next, and it's highlighted in the film's final intertitle that describes the moral of the story as not walking in front of your window with your shirt off. It's an amusing end to a trifle of a film, and it's the perfect little capper to tie everything together. "Don't take this too seriously," the movie is saying. And I happily took that advice.
Now, just a quick note on some technical stuff. This is Lubitsch really stretching himself in interesting ways. Firstly, there's the big Artists' Ball where Lubitsch uses montage and really complex multiple exposures to create a kind of euphoric representation of the out of control party. It's the kind of stuff that Murnau put into Sunrise and Hitchcock did in Champagne, and Lubitsch predates them both by a couple of years. There's also a moment where a husband is put in his place by his wife late in the film, and Lubitsch uses a surprisingly sophisticated compositing trick to diminish the husband in the frame like The Incredible Shrinking Man, and he walks through a doorway quite convincingly. I really did not expect to ever see Lubitsch using special effects and visuals this sophisticated, and he handles them quite well.
Lubitsch's early period in Germany largely disappointed me, but since coming to American I'm seeing why people like Wilder and even Irving Thalberg were so taken with his work. There's a light, effortless feel to Lubitsch's final products that so easily entertain that he makes it feel simple. Filmmaking is never simple, and that light touch is really why his films are becoming more and more enchanting, even when we're dealing with lesser works of a man obviously made for greater things.
