Two Silent Comedies from Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch is celebrated as the director of many of Hollywood’s great comedies, including Ninotchka (1939), To Be or Not to Be (1942), and Heaven Can Wait (1943), but he directed films in his native Germany for nearly a decade before his transition to Hollywood in 1922. Two of the best of Lubitsch’s early comedies, I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1918) and The Doll (1919), are available in a single Blu-ray set from Kino Lorber, and I recently treated myself to a copy during one of the company’s regular online sales. I had seen The Doll before and already knew it was a lot of fun, but I also thoroughly enjoyed the gender shenanigans in I Don’t Want to Be a Man. Even viewers who aren’t silent film aficionados can enjoy both of these lively pictures, but fans of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd will especially enjoy this double feature. If you’re looking for accessible silent comedies or working to expand your appreciation of Lubitsch’s work, both of these movies will fit the bill, and they also offer a grand introduction to the energetic comedy genius of leading lady Ossi Oswalda, who starred in a dozen of Lubitsch’s silent films.
I Don’t Want to Be a Man is the shorter of the two features at just 41 minutes, with a story that skips a lot of plot development to focus on the gags of its premise. Ossi Oswalda, who is both the actress and the character, resents the limits enforced on her by her guardians and escapes for a wild night on the town disguised as a man. In The Doll, Ossi is the daughter of a famous dollmaker who accidentally sells his real daughter to a nervous young man whose uncle insists that he get married. Of the two, The Doll more fully embodies the expectations of a feature film, with 70 minutes of story to develop characters like the unwilling groom Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), the temperamental dollmaker Hilarius (Victor Janson), Lancelot’s uncle (Max Kronert), and the scene-stealing dollmaker’s apprentice (Gerhard Ritterband).
Ossi Oswalda, the star of both pictures, makes for a delightful heroine, especially because both of her characters are quite badly behaved and utterly unrepentant about it. Her girlish, naughty protagonists throw off the restrictions of parents, guardians, social norms, and etiquette with glee, and they get what they want out of life because of it. They are obvious forerunners of the iconic screwball heroines later embodied by Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, and Claudette Colbert. Oswalda is a very physical comedian, and both the cross-dressing adventure and her stint as a girl pretending to be a life-size doll give her plenty of opportunities to use her whole body as part of the gag. Disguised as a man, she swaggers about town and then gets outrageously drunk with her unsuspecting guardian (Curt Goetz), which has her in a quandary when the combination of booze and cigars sends her running for the public toilets. Impersonating her broken dolly double, Ossi rapidly alternates between lively action and mechanical stiffness depending on who is looking at her. When Lancelot’s actions annoy or offend her, she reacts by moving so quickly that he thinks his imagination is playing tricks on him. Both heroines embody the chaotic joie de vivre of a cartoon character, creating upheaval wherever they go but ultimately making life better for themselves and their romantic partners.
Of the two films, The Doll is the more stylistically complex and interesting in terms of Lubitsch’s direction. In her essay for the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Farran Smith Nehme calls the movie “deliciously weird for 1919 or any other year,” which accurately sums it up. Adapted from a 19th century opera and set in an overtly fantastic world, it unfolds like a puppet show version of a fairy tale but still takes full advantage of the creative opportunities inherent in its cinematic medium. The opening establishes the toy box nature of the setting, as Lubitsch himself sets out a pair of dolls who then transform into Lancelot and his nanny on their way to an audience with Lancelot’s aged and ailing uncle. Cardboard sets constantly remind us not to expect realism here, but it’s still a laugh out loud shock to see the “horses” that pull a carriage. Lancelot’s uncle, the Baron of Chanterelle, is surrounded by greedy relatives who eagerly await his death, and we experience their clamoring as a screen full of yammering mouths. The hair of the dollmaker, Hilarius, first stands on end and then turns white in a rapid transformation, and we also see him sleepwalk across rooftops and fly into the air thanks to a handful of balloons. Aside from the antics of Ossi and Lancelot, we’re witness to the increasingly violent conflict between Hilarius and his unnamed apprentice, who alternates between suicidal attempts to drink paint and outraged resistance to his mistreatment by the master. Throughout the picture, the childish, artificial world stands in contrast to the very real and adult themes of violence, sex, and greed, a contradiction familiar to Tex Avery and Chuck Jones fans. Lancelot fears women and the sexual maturity they represent, and of course he isn’t ready for the bundle of unconstrained life embodied by Ossi, but her deception allows him to warm up to the idea by degrees until the truth can be revealed. It’s an absurd revision of the Pygmalion myth that perfectly captures the essence of screwball romance, where the man has to be hectored by the heroine until he eventually gives in to the inevitability of love.
Ernst Lubitsch died in 1947, and his final directorial effort, That Lady in Ermine (1948), was released after his death. Ossi Oswalda, whose last screen appearance came in 1933, also died in 1947 in Prague, having fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. For another Lubitsch/Oswalda film that’s available on physical media, look for The Oyster Princess (1919); the Kino Lorber Blu-ray also includes the 1919 Lubitsch comedy, Meyer from Berlin, starring the director himself. For even more films from Ernst Lubitsch, see Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and That Uncertain Feeling (1941). For a provocative double feature, try pairing The Doll with Lars and the Real Girl (2007), or trace its roots to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story, “The Sandman,” and the ballet Coppélia by watching a film adaptation of Hoffmann’s most famous story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
