Ladrão de Alcova

An utterly beautiful film. I watched this for at least the umpteenth time last night - maybe once a year every year since I taped it off TV in 1987. Did it let me down? It hasn't yet and I don't think it ever will: I was as captivated by it as I was the first time, and yet it portrays a world, its people and their actions I'll never know, and probably wouldn't want to know either. Some people I know can't watch any film or TV programme a second time and are puzzled when I can - but then could listen with pleasure to a piece of music for a thousandth time.

Lubitsch's peerless masterpiece about two crooks (Gaston and Lily) moving amongst high society, falling in love with each other, with high society and with high society in the attractive shape of rich businesswoman Madame Colet falling in love with Gaston is a witty, charming, sophisticated, erudite, relentless, sparkling etc comedy that by the finish has had the effect of defragmenting my mind and deleting the real world for a short while - no mean feat! Every second of every scene carries it's witticisms, not a moment is wasted from the dignified opening with the title song fading into the rubbish boat on the Grand Canal in Venice to the swift orgasmic climax in the taxi in Paris. At the beginning when the stricken Monsieur Philiba rises and falls to the floor of his hotel room again and the Neapolitan music lulls you across a cheesy model set to where the smoking Gaston is urbanely discussing cocktails with a waiter you should know you are in for something special. Ultra demure Kay Francis gets to says Divine twice in a row! Even looking at nothing but a clock for a minute carries a soundtrack bulging with wit and innuendo. Something as unimportant as Herbert Marshall apparently running up and down Kay Francis's stairs (on camera, in mirrors or in sound only) turns out to be an in-joke - he had only one leg. Other running gags make you smile after the film has long finished, such as Positively Tonsils and No Potatoes. And to think about this film even years later it's always with the lilting, insistent, mocking romantic background music! But I could go on and on, there's enough in this for 10 films of today to borrow if they could make them like this any more. "Frasier" on TV has been the closest in sophisticated comedy in recent times, but even so it couldn't match TIP's compact inventiveness. Out of the 97 million movies I've watched this is definitely in my top 5 favourites.

It's a pity that so many people can so easily be put off by black and white photography and bygone stars who they've never heard of; in this case what they're missing out on is near perfection, and again another film that will still be available when all of the undisciplined uncensored in-your-face films of today are forgotten.

In the first minutes, two nobles dressed to the teeth--the Second Earl of Bastrop and Lady Higgenbottom, let's say--exchange brittle, achingly witty repartee. It's all rather droll until Lady H. picks up the telephone to inform her staff at home that she'll be late for dinner. The director, Ernst Lubitsch, cuts to the other side of the conversation--and we see a fat landlady in a hovel crawling with cats looking baffled at the receiver and saying, "Whaddaya sayin'?" At that moment, you know that Lubitsch and his ideal-mate screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson, are playing a pretty sophisticated game--and in the nearly seventy years since this movie, comedy directors from Billy Wilder to George Cukor to Woody Allen have been playing catch-up.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE remains the most perfect of all sound comedies--it makes you feel as if you had consumed some celestial compound of champagne and helium. The surprise of the movie today is not the pleasure of its Lubitschian elegance, but the fact that the movie is screamingly funny at every turn--Lubitsch's smart bombs never miss their mark. And for all the applications of his "touch" we're grateful for, Lubitsch never again made anything so flawless--in these less-than-ninety minutes, he and Raphaelson turned dialogue comedy into Mozartean music.

... but you won't find any truly good guys either. It's the charm and sophistication of Lubitsch to deny these things to the audience.

Thieves Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and Gascon Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meet and fall in love in Venice. They then thieve their way across Europe until they hit Paris. They have no compunction about stealing anything from anybody. Part of what turns them on about one another is the stealing. Mariette Colet is the owner of Colet cosmetics. She has apparently inherited this firm from her late husband. She has no real interest in running the place and prefers to spend extravagantly on clothes, furs, and cars. She has no compunction about doing so in hard times. Lily and Monescu decide to steal from Madame Colet since she likes to delegate all of the number crunching work to secretaries, and Monescu charms her into giving him the position. He doesn't intend to embezzle from her. He's just going to clean her out of cash like the conventional thief that he is before he exits the premises.

But during the weeks they are working together Monescu and Madame Colet begin to fall for one another. They are both people of taste and refinement, so they have much in common. So now there is this triangle of which Monescu is painfully aware. Will he stay with Colet and abandon Lily? Will he perhaps spend one night with Colet AND leave with Lily? Colet seems like the type that if it was just one night of passion she wouldn't be upset by that either. Watch and find out.

It's all very sophisticated, and the dialogue is clever from beginning to end. You can feel the sexual tension in the air. Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton play romantic rivals for Colet who weren't getting anywhere with her before Monescu hit town, and now that he's here they blame him for their failure . C. Aubrey Smith is a member of Colet's board of directors who is more than a little suspicious of Monescu.

If you want to see romance played out realistically in an adult fashion, give this film a try.

A grand, grand film from the master of early, somewhat daring comedies! Delightful is the word to describe this gem which sparkles with great dialogue and pure elegance. The master of the suave sophisticate, Herbert Marshall, is wonderful as the gentleman thief. This type of part was his forte in his early career and he was ill-used later on by Hollywood. Nobody looked better in evening dress or could deliver a double entendre with such perfection. Kay Francis is her soigne best as the target of the jewel thieves.....although she could not pronounce her "r"s, she was the personification of chic and designers had a field day dressing her for her films. Miriam Hopkins may not have been the best choice for the part of Marshall's partner in crime; she never seems quite in sync with the rest of the cast. She had a reputation for being difficult and it shows just a bit here.....but that does not take anything away from the overall excellence of this movie. The censors had not cracked down in 1932 like they would in the coming years and this allows for some risque situations (for the time) which are pure delight. "Trouble in Paradise" is a true gem which, although somewhat dated, further enhances the Lubitsch reputation for quality film making.

...and Ernst Lubitsch at his zenith. First things first: thank you to TCM for showing this recently. Of course I taped it, and of course I've practically worn the tape out by now, a month later.

Point #2: something is terribly wrong in Paradise if the peak era of his work, 29-33, remains in shadow today. Where are the VHS/DVD releases of these wonderful films? Nowhere that I can find them; hopefully the good folks at Turner will continue reviving the early sound Lubitsches. I waited 25 years to see this one again, and the wait was not in vain. Those 25 years put a bit of snow on my roof, but they also allowed me to drink in the ambrosia that is this film with a bit more appreciation than I had at 16. And what intoxicating ambrosia it is! Script, performances, directorial vision are all exquisite. The leads are inspired (oh, for a night with Kay Francis!); the supporting players, expertly calibrated farceurs. The utilization of music as ironic counterpoint to the visuals rivals Clair; the title song, sung over the opening credits, will make your heart race, and break, at the same time. And the look of the film (Art Deco, lovingly handrubbed to a burnished glow) will linger with you forever.

Again and again, Lubitsch pulls rabbits out of hats: scenes like the deepening of Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis' relationship from business to pleasure 'seen' in a clock face are emblematic of what makes this such a special film. Its story is slight, frothy, very nearly silly; yet Lubitsch's knowing observation of small, telling details makes it magical. TROUBLE is not a timeless film, anchored as it is to a very specific time (Long Ago) and place (Far Away), which only deepens its charm and its seductive tugging on the audience's sleeve. I've watched it three times in a night, and three times more the following night - not behavior I usually exhibit. But the siren call of its lively, civilized wit is such that I'm hitting 'rewind' the moment it ends - I don't want to break the spell and return to reality just yet. As fertile as the preCode era is, as many classics as that golden period continues to yield up to those willing to discover them...TROUBLE IN PARADISE is the most glorious of them all.