La Dame au manteau d'hermine

I just watched this film on YouTube; it's there for free in version with very good image quality. It was a box office flop, and has a poor reputation among classic film devotees. But if you enjoy musicals, you might want to give it a chance.

I mildly enjoyed it. Fairbanks Jr. Is excellent, giving a spirtited performance with the right touch of believable emotion and light tungue in cheek playfulness. The sets are opulant. Fredrick Holander's music is lovely, though the song lyrics (by Leo Robin?) are mediocre and banal. There are occasional playfully funny moments.

On the down side, the film overall lacks the charm, subtle sexiness, and light touch that Lubitch would have given it, if he had directed the entire thing, and his capabilities were not greatly diminished by very poor health. Grable is OK in the role, but far from the ideal actress-singer for it. I've read that Fox head Zanick wanted to broaden her appeal and put her in more high class roles, so she made three classy pictures and all of them, including this one flopped. (One of them is excellent, and I highly recommend it, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim".)

That Lady in Ermine seems to have two endings; and I felt let down by the second one. It should have ended when the Fairbanks character rides away, bidding the Grable character a regretful goodby. But then there's a entirely unnecessary scene, which seems tacked on.

Watched 'That Lady in Ermine' as an admirer of both Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch and as a fan of classic-era film. It is hard to go wrong too with performers such as Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Caesar Romero on their own and just as big a delight seeing those names in the same film and there was an intriguing story and ideas here.

Ideas that could have been executed much better on the whole. 'That Lady in Ermine' is far from a bad film and there is a good deal to like, but it is very uneven, quite strange and doesn't really come together as an overall whole. While the talent and potential are not completely squandered they are nowhere near close to being fulfilled, all have done much better and deserved better.

Starting with the good things, 'That Lady in Ermine' does look great. It is very lavishly produced and shot in beautiful, vibrant Technicolor. The music is pleasant and charming regardless of its lack of memorability. There are elements of the Lubitsch touch, where there is sparkling wit, sophistication and charm and where the film has more energy.

Despite her later considering 'That Lady in Ermine' her least favourite film of her career, Betty Grable is spunky and charming, it is not a typical role for her but her approach to it is distinctively so. Romero and especially Fairbanks are immensely likeable in their roles and Walter Abel, Harry Davenport and Reginald Gardiner entertain in support.

However, the story is both slight, plot-less often, and overly silly, with a lot of ideas not done anywhere near much with and too many elements that don't gel together. The script is uneven, sometimes witty and at other times clunky and the pace is a mix of just fine to dull in other stretches. The final act is somewhat heavy-handed which jars with a good deal of the rest of the film.

As has been said, this was Lubitsch's last film and mostly his but he sadly died of a heart attack aged 55 during filming and the film was completed by Preminger. Some may say that the transition from one to the other was seamless, personally do not agree with this. The two had very different directing styles to each other and approached their films differently, Lubitsch's films were light, sophisticated and witty while Preminger's were heavier and some exploring darker and ahead of the time themes and subjects, both as great and absorbing as each other in their own way. Both styles can be seen here and don't gel together, with Lubitsch's style being more successful in his own distinctive way and far more enthusiastic while Preminger's was heavy-handed and coarse which is where the film is less interesting.

Overall, uneven but oddly interesting and watchable. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I enjoyed this film far more than anything had led me to anticipate; from reading other comments here, I suspect it benefits enormously from being seen on a full-size screen in the cinema, in the company of a cheerful and enthusiastic audience. I was lucky enough to have that experience, borne up on ripples of laughter from all around, and had an immensely good time with this undemanding comedy.

For it is as a comedy that it shines, if it shines anywhere at all. The music is nothing special -- in fact, I hadn't realised it *was* a musical, and was very surprised when the assembled ancestors burst into half-spoken lyric -- but I do have to admit that the half-threat, half-promise of 'Oh, what I'll do...' has proved far more catchy than it ever seemed at the time, as it's still going round and round in my head!

The plot, such as it is, largely pivots around the past history of the eponymous Francesca, a sixteenth-century portrait sporting a distinctly anachronistic hairstyle and fur-coat. Her idea on the sanctity of marriage don't quite jibe with those of her distant descendant, the Countess Angelina, and one can almost hear the storyline creaking at the seams under the strain of the Production Code in order to ensure that the heroine arrives unsullied in her much-delayed marriage-bed with the right man...

The romance is scarcely earth-shattering, and in fact the first few scenes, played pretty well straight, verge on the tedious. But where script and film really come to life is in the battle of the sexes that follows. The impudence of Douglas Fairbanks Jr's courtship of Betty Grable's married Angelina is equalled only by Betty-Grable-as-Francesca's pursuit of him in turn, culminating in complete role-reversal in the hilarious fantasy sequence where she -- literally -- sweeps him off his feet. This is probably the comic climax of the plot, although the consequences of the Colonel's understandable confusion are worked out with a deft touch in the remaining two 'acts' of the operetta-structure, and the spectacle of Fairbanks' blissful, bemused awakening is more or less worth the price of admission on its own.

Grable is entirely convincing in establishing her two contrasting characters, wisely gets almost all the (limited) singing opportunities, and shares the honours where the swathes of quotable dialogue in the various verbal duels are concerned. But in the field of unspoken reaction she is really outclassed by her male supporting leads; Fairbanks in particular is an absolute treat in a number of wordless sequences whose set-up and humour is worthy of the silent screen.

This film is too uneven in style to be a classic, varying from sparkling repartee to hackneyed tedium. But at its best it is quite honestly very funny indeed, and brought a round of spontaneous applause and laughter across the auditorium at the end as the lights went up. Out of tune with its times, it may have failed to draw contemporary audiences -- but, on this showing, really didn't deserve to be disowned by both Grable and Preminger, the (uncredited) director. This is no masterpiece, but a thoroughly entertaining minor work, and I for one found myself grinning in remembrance all the way home.

Watching That Lady In Ermine I was wondering what Betty Grable was doing in a project that seemed to be aimed for Marlene Dietrich to do. Someone over at 20th Century Fox may have decided one sex symbol is as good as another. Darryl F. Zanuck should have known better.

Betty plays a 19th century Italian countess whose domain has been invaded by a troop of Hungarian Hussars captained by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Her ghostly ancestor whose portrait hangs in the palace hall along with the rest of her distinguished family tree, sees no small resemblance in Doug now and another invader some 300 years earlier whom she dealt with when armies failed.

Besides that the current Betty has just been married to Cesar Romero and the invasion has come at a most inopportune moment, before things have been consummated. That's going to give anyone a bad attitude, I guarantee.

Fresh, wholesome all American Betty is NOT the actress to do seductive and mysterious. Marlene Dietrich might have put this over, but with Betty it falls flatter than yesterday's presidential candidate. She and Fairbanks have no chemistry at all, though Doug is as charming as ever and someone I can watch in anything.

Frederick Hollander and Leo Robin wrote the score for this film and This Is The Moment got an Oscar nomination for Best Song. That Lady In Ermine's one chance for Oscar glory fell to Buttons And Bows.

Ernest Lubitsch died midway during the film and Otto Preminger finished That Lady In Ermine. I can't believe Lubitsch had Grable in mind for the lead here. Neither will you if you see That Lady In Ermine.

Ernst Lubitsch's style permeates this unjustly forgotten movie, from a different age of cinema. Oddly enough, any old film noir (or just crime-oriented) feature from its age is revered on a pedestal today, while this wonderful 20th Century-Fox big-budget effort stirs little interest.

It is a remake of a 1927 silent film of the same title, a Corinne Griffith star vehicle from First National Pictures, the distributor that later became part of Warner Brothers. It's a lost film, perhaps because a silent movie of an operetta was hopelessly dated even then. Lubitsch includes fantasy and satire here, with the play-acting performances of stars Grable and Fairbanks delightful in that they make fun of the antiquated Period Costume Film cliches, while simultaneously creating warm and empathetic characters. The elements of satire have given way in modern cinema to vulgarity, as evidenced in the work of Mel Brooks (who remade Lubtisch's hit "To Be Or Not to Be") or my favorite director Ken Russell, yet Lubitsch is able to maintain the high ground even in the silliest of scenes, perhaps aided by the censorship of his day.

The Technicolor photography (by Leon Shamroy) remains stunning and just what any film buff should admire. A couple of oddities struck me as I finally saw this movie, so many decades after release, first the foot-fetish theme that instantly suggests Luis Bunuel, who was working in Hollywood during this period. And by some odd coincidence, the starting point for the movie's fantasy element is the stunning portrait of Gable as a 17th Century ancestor of her main character, which comes to life occasionally. Fairbanks' infatuation with the lady in the portrait is the same starting point as Preminger's greatest movie, "Laura", and Otto ended up completing "Ermine" after Lubitsch's sudden death at the age of 55.