A Princesa das Ostras

Saw this yesterday at the "Konzerthaus", Vienna, with live music provided by a jazzy Belgian group called "Flat Earth Society". Without a doubt the best movie I've seen in quite a while. Highlights in this quasi-surrealistic romp (running a mere 63') include a meticulously choreographed "foxtrott epidemic" and a mass boxing-match amongst a benevolent society of billionaire's daughters. Ossi Oswalda (great name by the way), as the daughter of the titular "Oyster King", somehow manages to be tempestuous, spiteful, spoiled, endearing, lovable and sexy at the same time. A miracle of screen acting and directing. Stemming from 1919, the film reflects the coming of a new age of relative sexual freedom, female self-determination and the resignation of the aristocracy as the determining force of Central European society after the defeat of the World War ("Prinz Nucki", Ossi's intended, has fallen into the squalor of a one-room apartment). Lubitsch, at 27, reaching the pinnacle of his art from which he would not descend for the rest of his unique career.

This wildly satiric four-act film stars Victor Janson as Quaker, an extremely rich American whose every need has been catered for. He doesn't have to do a thing: servants carry him around from place to place, another servant serves him tea, while a third puts a cigar up to his lips on a silver salver. Desperate to get rid of his unruly daughter (Ossi Oswalda), he arranges for her to marry someone suitably rich and socially advantaged. However things do not turn out as planned ... DIE AUSTERNPRINZESSIN (The Oyster Princess) offers a satiric view of Americanism at a time when the German economy was in a particularly weak state. The Quaker family are characterized as rich and wasteful; they fully deserve to become the victims of a comic trick. The film includes some characteristically zany sequences, notably a boxing-match involving Oswalda and a gaggle of female friends, who line up opposite one another and fight, proving, no doubt, that they are as strong (and as pig- headed) as their male counterparts. The film moves towards its expected happy ending, but not without offering some interesting suggestions as to how to contract an advantageous marriage without love even assuming any significance.

Ernst Lubitsch is probably best known to us Yanks as the director of "Ninotchka" and other movies where the humor often derived from possible innuendos (commonly called the Lubitsch touch). You might not have known that he started out in his native Germany directing comedies, including "Die Austernprinzessin" ("The Oyster Princess" in English).

This movie depicts a bored rich family where the dad decides to marry off the daughter, only for some unexpected things to happen as a result. I suspect Lubitsch viewed the United States as a land of decadent excess (the family has servants waiting on them hand-and-foot) and wanted to satirize it. How ironic that he later moved to the US and had a prominent career during Hollywood's golden age. Strange how things work out.

Anyway, it's a funny movie. Although it's available on Wikipedia, it doesn't have subtitles there, so you'll probably have to rent a physical copy.

"Die Austernprinzessin", a film directed in the silent year of 1919 by the great German director Herr Ernst Lubitsch, is a very suitable silent film for a decadent Teutonic aristocrat because it is a superb collection of excesses and obviously where there are excesses, there is a German aristocrat.

"Die Austernprinzessin" is a mad Teutonic comedy, absolutely brilliant in its artifice. It tells the frantic story of Dame Ossi ( Dame Ossi Oswalda, who played the German flapper roles in Herr Lubitsch's early comedies like this one ) the whimsical daughter of Herr Quaker ( Herr Victor Janson ), the Amerikan oyster king. He and Dame Ossi are well aware that the shoe cream king's daughter has married a count ( that fräulein has style, ja wohl! ), so Dame Ossi must, at any cost , at least find a prince to wed ( tsk, tsk, tsk…) This is the beginning of a peculiar film full of hilarious, grotesque, surreal and inventive scenes. Of course, by the end of the film, Dame Ossi achieves her matrimonial goal.

Herr Lubitsch spared no effort to accomplish his artistic goals; in the oeuvre there are astounding and modernistic settings by Herr Kurt Richter that give the film an atmosphere of exaggerated grandiloquence revolving around the daily lives of the main characters. The luxurious art direction reflects the luxurious and carefree style of those nouveau rich ( and what can be worse than money at the service of bad taste?), exaggerated to the point of fantasy; for example, the bath scene in which Dame Ossi needs a lot of servants in order to take a bath properly, or the wedding banquet scene in where there are as many servants as different dishes, including one for desserts, coffee and cigars. Such shameless opulence in those hard Weimar days aims at getting the audience to briefly forget their troubles and laugh out loud at Herr Lubitsch's wildly nonsensical ideas.

There is a curiosity in "Die Austernprinzessin"; at the end of the film, Herr Lubitsch betrays his most sacred film precept, in the scene where Herr Quaker spies on his just married daughter through the bedroom door keyhole. Herr Lubitsch, fortunately wouldn't repeat this mistaken voyeurism later in his career because the great German director came to know very well that malicious suggestion is preferable to showing plainly what happens behind a closed door…

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must eat two dozen oysters while being careful not to swallow the pearls inside.

When one considers the age of this film and Lubitsch's failure as a dramatic director, especially with his ponderous MADAME DU BARRY (PASSION) that same year, it's both a delight and a relief to experience him finding his comic niche and beginning to blossom with his delightful little "touches." It is crude as were most films of 1919, but it is full of invention, delightful absurdities and nonsense. It all adds up to a frothy comedy that is most enjoyable. The fox trot mania sequence is particularly endearing. Seek this one out.