To Be or Not to Be (1942), a Daring Mixed-Genre Satire from Ernst Lubitsch

This Hollywood-savvy item appeared in the December 1932 issue of Vanity Fair,   "…although a German director [he] is now claimed by America. His gay and cynic touch, his dramatic use of detail, have reconditioned many an otherwise anemic script and saved it from the shelf – until at one time the studio wise-crack of the hour was always, “For God’s sake, send for Lubitsch.""

Celebrating "The Shop Around the Corner" on its 80th Birthday

Today marks the 80^th anniversary of the premiere of what has been called Ernst Lubitsch’s “most discreet tour de force of art concealing art,” The Shop Around the Corner (1940).

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With a Nod to TCM, a Glance at 6 Favorite Holiday Classics

In my pre-TCM life, before 2005, I ritually watched a small handful of classics during the holiday season every year, films like A Christmas Carol (1951), The Bishop's Wife (1947), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Scrooge (1970) that had been airing on network TV and local channels for years. Then I discovered Turner Classic Movies and the titles on my list of annual favorites multiplied.  These are some of the holiday must-sees I watch in December as the 25th draws near, each of them introduced to me by TCM.

A Touch of Lubitsch - Tuesday on TCM

Loves of Pharaoh (1929) stars Emil Jannings

Beginning at 6:15 am Eastern/3:15 am Pacific on Tuesday, January 28, Turner Classic Movies will treat its viewers to thirteen hours of 'the Lubitsch Touch'.

Kicking off TCM's birthday tribute/Lubitsch-fest will be the spectacular The Loves of Pharaoh (1922), a grand silent historical epic. Made in Germany and financed by Paramount's European film Alliance (EFA), the film would be the last in the series of such epics Lubitsch directed during his reign as something of a 'German DeMille.' He was soon on his way to America, where his star would continue to rise.

Ernst Lubitsch does Noel Coward: Design for Living (1933)

Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March

Fredric March was already an Oscar winner and a newly minted Hollywood star when he co-starred with Miriam Hopkins and Gary Cooper in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1933 adaptation of the Noel Coward play Design for Living. In 1929, when all the major studios were scouring the Broadway stage for photogenic leading men with trained and mellifluous voices, March had been recruited and signed by Paramount Pictures.  He received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for his 1930 portrayal of ‘Tony Cavendish’ in The Royal Family of Broadway, but it was his split-personality tour-de-force as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 that brought Fredric March his first Academy Award and movie stardom.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940): A Lubitsch Christmas

It is only occasionally that a film ages with extraordinary grace. One such film, Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 classic, The Shop Around the Corner, has mellowed as elegantly as a rare and prized bottle of Hungarian Tokaji Aszú...

Balta Street, Budapest

Lubitsch, acclaimed for sophisticated films with a light-as-air "touch," was at an artistic peak in 1940. He took special care with The Shop Around the Corner, one of his favorites among his own films. Of it he would write, “Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer…” And this atmosphere is unmistakable. With the first strains of “Ochi Tchornya” heard over Leo the Lion’s roar, the first glimpse of a dreamlike setting near Budapest’s historic Andrassy Street and through an assortment of unique and quirky characters, the spirit of old Europe comes alive on screen. 

To Be or Not to Be - Carole Lombard's final film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch

'The Lubitsch Touch' has been dissected and analyzed for decades. Billy Wilder, who had been protégé to director Ernst Lubitsch early on, put it succinctly: "The Lubitsch Touch is a light touch. But there are serious overtones in Lubitsch. He understood life..."