Miss Milliard

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.

The old adage about jokes has it that "It's the way you tell 'em", and this applies to visual gags as well as verbal ones. Almost anything can be funny depending on how you present it. The German comedies of Ernst Lubitsch are like a master class in how to "tell" jokes on the silent screen.

What makes these pictures very different to their American counterparts, is that in Hollywood silent comedies revolved around a star. Germany had no Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, but they had a lot of decent comedy supporting players, and they had the brain of Lubitsch. In Lubitsch's best comedies (and this is one of his two or three finest) the humour is all derived from arrangements and exaggeration. He was, in effect, a choreographer of comedy.

We all know about the necessity of comic timing. But comic space is equally important. Lubitsch often makes a joke out of suddenly changing the way we view something. For example, we see from the side-view Nucki and Josef hurriedly tidying their little apartment, and then when they finally allow the matchmaker to enter, we switch to the angle from the doorway, and are suddenly hit with the inventively effective makeshift throne room they have thrown together. But Lubitsch's greatest and most unique moments are the ensemble gags. You see, if Mister Quaker had one servant following him around wiping his nose and carrying his cup of tea, it might be kind of funny. But to have four identically dressed servants trotting after him, each one doing a different menial task, is hilarious. The jewel in the Oyster Princess's crown has to be the "foxtrot epidemic" which is absolutely beautiful in its precise comic construction.

Lubitsch has melded this thing from the most wonderful of components. Writer Hanns Kraly has given him a tight and fast moving plot, ideal for the lightning supply of gags (apparently in their many collaborations Lubitsch would get the basic idea for a story, and Kraly would shape it into something workable). The Oyster Princess is a particularly absurd spin on a well-known theme – a marriage of convenience between nouveau riche and bankrupt aristocracy. There's also a dash of Cinderella thrown in, with Josef's impersonation of Prince Nucki making him the Dandini figure. These are familiar themes, and thus ones easy for Lubitsch to tweak into crazed but affectionate parody.

And the cast, while not quite the attention-holding clowns that formed the centre of Hollywood silent comedy, are all competent at their game and worthy of a chuckle. Harry Liedtke pratfalls nicely and does an amusing drunk act. He has a great face for a comedy lead man; handsome, but with his wide eyes looking perpetually a little sick or worried. Ossi Oswalda was one thing the US didn't have – a young and pretty female comic lead who is actually comical in her own right. The possible exception to this would be Mabel Normand, but even she didn't get stuck into these roles the way Ossi does. Oswalda's spoilt brat act is absolutely priceless. Meanwhile Julius Falkenstein is delightfully playful, and Victor Janson's stone-faced pessimism is almost reminiscent of Keaton.

Pictures like the Oyster Princess may be a far cry from the "sophisticated" bedroom comedies of the 1930s for which Lubitsch is best known, but they have a "Lubitsch touch" of a very different kind, that of the bizarre, the over-the-top; the touch of a unique and inspired comic genius. And who says the Germans have no sense of humour?

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.

The Oyster Princess (1919) - 7.0

Some legit mentally good filmmaking going on here with some interesting shots

Absurdist humor that doesn't feel completely dated

Well put together sets with a solid narrative

Impressive film for the time