Lo scoiattolo

A military fort is waiting for the arrival of their new lieutenant, but he is captured on his way by a gang of outlaws. To make matters worse for everyone involved, the outlaw leader's daughter has taken a shine to the man.

The Kino DVD calls this film a "playfully subversive satire of military life" and claims that it not only foreshadows the later Lubitsch films (which is obvious), but could be called an "ancestor" to Monty Python and Woody Allen. That may or may not be a fair assessment. This is, in my estimation, not the best Lubitsch comedy, even amongst his early work. I much preferred "The Oyster Princess".

Either way, 1920s silent comedy is usually seen as dominated by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, with Harold Lloyd sometimes getting an honorable mention. We need to mention Lubitsch more. He may not have had the physical comedy in his films that these other three did, but he was no less of a genius.

One of the better of Lubitsch's rough mountain comedies, with Pola Negri as the wild daughter of the bandit chief (all of the the bandits' possessions are festooned with skulls, to show how dangerous they are) who falls in love with the handsome lieutenant brought in to marry the daughter of the corpulent and ineffectual colonel of the fort. Like his other mountain comedies -- MEYER FROM BERLIN, ROMEO AND JULIET IN THE SNOW and KOHLHEISEL'S DAUGHTER -- it is a very broad comedy, with much falling down in the snow.

In those days, Lubitsch would shoot half a dozen films a year for UFA, and one would always be a mountain comedy shot on site in Bavaria, where he liked to take a working vacation every winter. They were not polished and witty pieces like The Oyster Princess and The Doll, but they were very popular.

One thing that strikes you as you watch the early Lubitsch comedies recently released on DVD in the US by Kino is-- how did Lubitsch come to have such an extravagant visual style, only to give it up a few years later? The later Lubitsch movies are certainly handsome, coming as they mostly do from Paramount and MGM, the chicest of the Hollywood studios. But for all the exotic places depicted in his films, it never occurs to him in later years to depict them with wild curlicues of plaster, fortresses that look like birthday cakes, staircases that descend a quarter-mile amid running water, as he does the European fantasy-land in The Wildcat.

The Wildcat is a sort of burlesque on a genre of military romances buried so deeply in the mists of memory that they still seem familiar even when it's hard to think of an actual example of what's being parodied (The Desert Song?). There's a fortress on the edge of mountainous wilds, and there's a handsome young officer who's been exiled there because of his love life. And then there's a tribe of wild mountain people including a tempestuous daughter, played by Pola Negri, with whom the officer will fall in love.

As with the mistaken identity plot in The Oyster Princess, you can imagine the 30s comedy this would be the setup for, but it's nothing like this-- which mainly consists of running around and clowning broadly. Only a few bits here and there-- a hilariously exaggerated depiction of the results of the officer's Casanova-like behavior, a delightful bit of comedy on the quarter-mile staircase that plays out with the purity and visual grace of Buster Keaton's single-take descent down six flights of stairs in The Cameraman-- are actually especially funny. (There's also a quite racy "Lubitsch Touch" moment involving his photo, a pair of pants, and where she happens to kiss.)

You wish in vain for Negri and her inamorato to sit down and actually share a scene, heat up the chemistry set, show us some real one-on-one Lubitsch Touch worthy of Billy Wilder's line that "Lubitsch could do more with a closed door than most directors could do with an open fly." But at least in Negri you have a recognizable comic human being, full of life and randiness-- and the ending, though still half-cartoon, has an emotional effect well beyond anything in The Oyster Princess just three years earlier.

Viewing "The Wildcat," is like watching a live action Max Fleischer cartoon. Like those early animated wonders, this comedy is full of goofy characters and creative direction. The cast, especially Pola Negri and Paul Heidemann show no fear in bringing Lubitsch's wild vision to life, which include some truly laugh out loud moments. While the Fleischer cartoons are only around seven minutes long, "The Wildcat," struggles at times to maintain its energy for a feature length film. The pros of this movie far out weigh the cons, though, and if you're looking for a non-traditional silent film that will put a smile upon your face, then you need to search no further.

It really is obvious at this point that Ernst Lubitsch needed dialogue to shine. I don't think he'd made a bad film yet (well, except for The Eyes of the Mummy which I've mostly pushed out of my brain), but he was consistently held back by the silent film medium's inherently different approach to building character than sound films or stage plays. His best films are comedies that take a broader approach to things, which The Wildcat tries to fit in, but, at the same time, this film embraces a level of character complexity that Lubitsch can't quite justify through the actual narrative. The film's focus, though, ends up being zany comic antics, which is where the film is easily at its best and most entertaining, but I feel like if Lubitsch wasn't going to figure out how to write more rounded characters in the silent film space, he should have simplified the storytelling, especially in the final act.

Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) is a ladies' man who is sent to the remote outpost run by a fat, mustachioed commander (Victor Janson). The commander has a wife (Marge Kohler) who lords over him and a daughter Lilli (Edith Meller) whom the commander decides should marry Alexis when he comes. On his way to the fortress, Alexis is waylaid by bandits led by the titular wildcat, Rischka (Pola Negri) who becomes completely enraptured by this gentleman soldier who manages to get away from his captors through a series of caves that he just kind of wanders through. It's a comedy, so it's slightly amusing, at least. These first two acts (like most of Lubitsch's early films, there are explicit acts) are the weakest of the five and they are really just about setting up the characters (borderline caricatures) and overall situation.

With news of the bandits, the commander sends Alexis and the men out to punish the attackers, but Rischka and the men under her are easily able to embarrass the soldiers with snowballs and superior placement, sending Alexis back defeated. However, the commander just assumes a victory and decides to marry Alexis to Lilli as a reward. The soldiers deciding to not correct their commander is honestly pretty funny. What follows is the central comic set piece of the film, the celebratory dance in honor of the betrothed. Reminiscent of the foxtrot epidemic in The Oyster Princess, it's a party that steadily grows out of control as people get into the music, including two guards outside the fortress's main gate. It's a raucous affair that gets intertwined with Rischka leading a small raiding party into the fortress, stealing some clothes, running into the drunk commander who salutes them, and, ultimately, with Alexis and Rischka chasing after each other through the large, unreal sets.

There's a moment where both Rischka and Alexis are spinning on a pole as they chase after each other that's completely unreal but highly entertaining and just part of the escalating comic and manic energy of the sequence. There's no effort to make it connect from an editing perspective to what comes before and after, with a quick cut to Rischka running in another room being the next shot, but it's kind of perfect with the silly quality that the film is embracing.

The actual dramatics of the film don't work quite as well. It's a situation where Alexis has to choose between Lilli and Rischka but also where Rischka has to choose between Alexis and the bandit Pepo (Hermann Thimig). This sort of two-sided question really needs strong character work, even in a silly movie like this one, to work. Why does Alexis ultimately choose Lilli? Is it his duty? It's kind of hard to figure out. The harder side is Rischka deciding to let Alexis go and return to Pepo, willingly just walking away from the man she was consumed with having for herself. Even in a silly film that embraces some early form of cartoon logic, if these dramatic turns come up they need to be supported, and I don't think they are.

Does that sink the film? Not at all. It just limits my appreciation. This isn't the top tier of Lubitsch's early comic work in the German film industry. It's second tier behind The Doll and The Oyster Princess, but it's certainly funnier than the Sally Meyer stuff.

Essentially, I really look forward to sound coming into Lubitsch's toolbox.