La poupée

This comedy from the hands of Ernst Lubitsch in 1919 is a joyride through a number of imaginative sets and situations. Even though its artificiality if ever apparent, the movie makes it work by playing with the costumes and sets, to create a whimsical world where everything can happen.

Like other Lubitsch films the plot of this is build upon similar themes such as facade and identity. Although not my favourite of Lubitsch's films it hold a place in the top five. This movie is assured to put a smile on your face the whole way through, driven by Lubitsch's at times expressive directing.

"The Doll" is a delightful feature--the best I've seen of director Ernst Lubitsch's German films. The deliberately artificial and often theatrical settings--flat backdrops, fake trees and people in horse costumes included--by Kurt Richter saliently add to the picture's enchantment and fairytale-like narrative. "The Doll" is similar in this approach to Maurice Tourneur's 1918 films "The Blue Bird" and "Prunella." Like "The Blue Bird," "The Doll" has a few moments that seem reminiscent of the feéries of early-cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, such as the Moon's facial expressions and the stop-motion animation to change the doll maker's hair. Highly-artificial theatricality was also adopted for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), although in a very different way. Lubitsch begins the film well by appearing in front of the camera to introduce and arrange the mise-en-scène in miniature--a scene that then fades to the actual set and beginning of the story proper.

In it, the baron's nephew doesn't want to marry a woman, so he purchases what he believes is a life-size doll to be his wife. Meanwhile, a real woman, the doll maker's daughter, is pretending to be that doll to hide that the doll maker's apprentice broke the doll that was based on her appearance. So, the nephew thinks he's fooling everyone, when he's the one being fooled. It's a simple narrative, briskly plotted, and very well enacted. The inherent sexism isn't lost on Lubitsch either, as a humorous advertisement offers the doll maker's product to widowers and misogynists alike. Additionally, there are a few light sex jokes throughout. Ossi Oswalda is wonderful, cute and funny, with her various expressions and movements, including the dancing, as she plays the character masquerading as a lifeless doll. Her performance significantly helps make this photoplay entertaining. The slapstick and subplot antics between the wacky-looking doll maker and his young apprentice are even amusing and appreciated.

Dancing and a comedy chase make their way into this and other Lubitsch films. The themes of mistaken identity or masquerading as acting and doubles also underlie the humor of several Lubitsch comedies, in Germany and America. His three earliest comedies that I've seen ("The Merry Jail," "I Don't Want to Be a Man" and "The Oyster Princess") all play with these ideas in different and self-reflexive ways, with characters pretending to be someone else. The girl isn't only doubled as a doll; her image is literally doubled photographically during a dream scene. Moreover, the theme of fakery extends further in "The Doll": the dolls are fake, a real woman fakes being one of them, which is supported by the fake appearance of much of the film's production design. The entire production coalesces to firmly establish the film's world as fantasy. The sets and designs of Lubitsch's German films seem to have always been impressive, but in some of them, it feels that they overwhelm their plays, or that the narratives and characters were never equal to the grand décors, but in "The Doll," it all fits together.

Such a charmer. It certainly feels like a Lubitsch film, as it pushes boundaries with sex but in a playful way, makes cheeky observations about human behavior, and has entertaining characters skating along in a light comedy. Pretty impressive, especially for 1919, and well worth 66 minutes.

Some of the bits I liked:

• Seeing Lubitsch himself as the film begins, setting up the doll house which the characters then inhabit.

• The performances from Ossi Oswalda (the daughter/doll) and Gerhard Ritterband (the young apprentice). Oswalda's facial expressions and body control as the doll are wonderful, and Ritterband imitations of his boss were amusing. I also chuckled when he kisses his boss's wife after having kissed the doll, "Just so no one feels neglected," and how he later says he's throwing himself out the window out of shame, only to slide out easily from the first story.

• The artistry in the set designs, which while not boldly Expressionistic, have quite a flair, making the film a treat visually. You also get a couple of clearly fake horses, little effects like a montage of close-ups of chattering mouths, a transparency during a dream sequence, and a man's hair turning white when he gets shocking news.

• The doll being advertised as follows: "Offered to bachelors, widowers, and misogynists! I have succeeded, with the help of a mechanism I built, in constructing a human-like doll who can walk, dance, and sing by pushing different buttons." And as an aside, the toymaker has designed it to look like his daughter, even though it's a short leap to think of it as a sex doll being peddled to lonely (and abusive?) men, how creepy is that?

• The priests chowing down food like pigs, not wanting to share, and then finagling their way into getting their hands on the boy's dowry. One of them later ogles the "doll's" legs while she's dancing.

• The family members arguing over possessions before a loved one has even passed away, breaking a vase in the process.

• How the guy who is afraid of girls goes from being chased all over town by 40 young women who all want to marry him to being in the showroom at the dollmaker's, confronted by (probably 40, the same 40) dolls who all hop over to him eagerly, nodding their heads.

• The various innuendo once the young man does take possession of what he thinks is a doll. The toymaker tells him "Don't forget to oil her every two weeks." His father asks him whether he wants any last advice before leaving for the first night of his marriage, to which he replies "No thanks, I have an instruction manual." Oh my goodness, if this isn't classic Ernst Lubitsch, I don't know what is.

Because the Baron of Chanterelle wants to preserve his family line, he forces his timid nephew Lancelot to choose one of the village maidens to wed. Lancelot flees to a monastery to escape the forty eager maidens. When the gluttonous monks discover that the Baron is offering a large sum for the marriage, they suggest Lancelot marry a mechanical doll instead.

I absolutely love how this was put on as a mixture between a play and a film. Some of the sets (such as inside the castle) seem quite elaborate, while other things (the trees and horses) smack of a high school production. But not in a bad way -- there is a certain charm to how this story unfolded. Add to that the wild hair and outfit of the puppet master (a precursor to Willy Wonda) and you have a great looking film.

Something could be said about the interaction between people and robots, and at what point are robots so lifelike that the line between human and non-human is all too fuzzy. But this is a light-hearted film and I will not get too serious here.

The opening shot of Ernst Lubitsch's The Doll announces wordlessly that it's going to be...different. A man, Lubitsch himself, comes out and sets up a house and yard with paper on a table, which we then zoom in on and two characters exit the house to start the story. What follows is an unrealistic tale of love and fantasy that delights and entertains while providing what seems to be the earliest form of the Lubitsch Touch. This isn't the tale of high society and wit that Lubitsch became famous for, but it's really close to it.

The Baron of Chanterelle (Max Kronert) is frustrated because he has only one heir, his nephew Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), and Lancelot has seemingly no interest in women or extending the family line. He dictates that Lancelot must marry, and he decrees it to the whole kingdom, sending all forty eligible maidens into a Benny Hill-esque chase for Lancelot around the storybook looking country as the Baron chases behind, taking spoonfuls of medicine from his assistant as he goes. It's amusing and delightful, and it ends with Lancelot finding refuge in the local abbey, led by the abbot (Jakob Tiedtke), where the friars all sit around, bemoan their near ruinous state as they eat large portions of pork and bread. Lancelot begs them to grant him a safe space from his uncle's grasp, and they let him in.

It's when the Baron puts an ad in the kingdom's newspaper begging Lancelot to come back with a promise of several hundred thousand kroner as a dowry that the abbot reads, giving him a great idea. He'll connect Lancelot with the renowned dollmaker Hilarius (Victor Janson), and Lancelot can bring a female doll with him to the Baron to trick him into thinking that Lancelot has married. He'll be able to take the dowry and give it to the abbey so they'll never run out of pork knuckles! Nothing about this is terribly deep, and it's sometimes a bit too thin (why does Lancelot agree to give all the money to the abbey? I dunno). However, the meat of the film is the titular doll.

Hilarius has created his newest doll and modeled it after his daughter Ossi (Ossi Oswalda, in a dual role). When Hilarius' apprentice (Gerhard Ritterband) accidentally breaks the arm of the doll, Ossi decides to protect him (why? Unclear) by pretending to be the doll just as Lancelot shows up to pick a doll for his ruse. The film becomes an outright farce with Ossi pretending to be the doll with Lancelot dragging her around as she maintains the ruse. Why she does it is unclear, but the comic effect is sustained surprisingly well through the series of events. She keeps her arms up and maintains a static smile while obviously getting a kick out of the whole thing (her most likely motivation: it simply entertains her). She keeps it up through the wedding ball where she has to balance her need to maintain the fiction for Lancelot while happily dropping it here and there when Lancelot isn't looking to grab some food or drink or just dance with the Baron. Lancelot's innocent inability to grasp the situation (married to the storybook method of the film's telling) is the source of a lot of the comedy in the story, and that Lubitsch leaned so heavily into the storybook visual motifs throughout shows that he knew there needed to be a level of artifice around the events to give it the kind of narrative space necessary to sell the events to the audience.

This farce of intentionally mistaken identities along with the high society, European setting is what makes it feel more in line with the later perception of Lubitsch and his work, but that outright storybook visual aesthetic and lack of wit in the dialogue (there's not none, but it's extremely limited by the silent film format, relegating the little wit it can display in dialogue to intertitles) makes it feel like a proto-form of what Lubitsch would later become known for.

The resolution of the plot threads lead the pair back to the abbey after the successful conning of the Baron (since Ossi is a real person and not a doll, was it really a conning?), and Ossi's identity gets fully revealed, leading to the two falling in love. Why? It's thin stuff, but it's amusing. However, the depth of character required isn't quite captured. And yet, this isn't Carmen, this is The Doll. It's a farce and a comedy, and there's enough work done to make the comedy work and the narrative flow, just not enough to make the heart sing by the end.

I really appreciate the deep weirdness of the film, offset by the farcical aspects. Whenever I see a female doll like this in a film, I automatically think of the dehumanizing look at the titular character in Fellini's Casanova. It's nice to see this detail played more lightly, though I imagine this was an influence on Fellini later.

This is something of a nice gem in Lubitsch's early career. It's light and frothy farce that could have benefited from a stronger approach to its characters to establish them and their motives. However, what drives the film is its light comic sensibilities which, when combined with the intentional storybook visual aesthetic, creates a delightful little trifle of a film that points to where Lubitsch was going to go later.