Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise

Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Greig. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Grover Jones, based on a play by Aladar Laszlo. Cinematography: Victor Milner. Art direction: Hans Dreier. Music: W. Franke Harling. Costume design: Travis Banton.

If you want a good example of the damage done to American movies by the enforcement of the Production Code, look no further than Trouble in Paradise. Ernst Lubitsch's comic masterpiece could not have been made two years later, when the Code went into effect. It could not even be re-released or shown commercially until the death of the Code in the late 1960s. The loss to the art of cinema is incalculable, even though filmmakers including Lubitsch went on to find other ways of being witty and sexy. On the face of it, Trouble in Paradise sounds trivial: Con artists Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and Gaston (Herbert Marshall) fall in love when each tries to filch the other's belongings: a wallet, a brooch, a watch, a garter. So they team up and go off to Paris where their target becomes the wealthy and beautiful Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), owner of a leading parfumerie. What will happen to Lily when Gaston falls in love with Mariette? What makes it work is Lubitsch's unflagging wit: A film that will soon be wafting the scent of Mme. Colet's perfume opens with a Venetian garbage man dumping the contents of a can into a loaded garbage scow and punting off into a canal singing "O Sole Mio." It's only the first of the many Lubitsch touches. But perhaps the greatest touch of all is the casting: Hopkins was never funnier or sexier and Francis never more radiant. I have to admit that on my first viewing I was initially put off by the casting of Marshall: a sad-eyed, somewhat slumped middle-aged man with a wooden leg. (The scenes in which Gaston sprints up and down Mariette's staircase are probably the work of a body double.) But Marshall turns out to be perfectly charming in the role, credibly wooing both leading ladies. A heartthrob like Cary Grant would have wrecked the chemistry, becoming the apex of what needs to be an equilateral triangle. William Powell would have been too vivid in the part, echoing his previous teamings with Francis. Fredric March had a touch too much of the ham -- Marshall succeeds by underplaying the role. There are some other nice surprises: Those peerless character actors Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton were usually used as comic relief, but Trouble in Paradise is a comedy that needs no relieving; Ruggles and Horton are there to do their own thing and they do it well. The ending, which flouts a key commandment of the Code, is suitably bittersweet, but paradise needs a little trouble to make you appreciate it the more.

Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

Cast: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Roland Young, Zasu Pitts, Leila Hyams, Maude Eburne, Lucien Littlefield. Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, Harlan Thompson, Humphrey Pearson, based on a novel by Harry Leon Wilson. Cinematography: Alfred Gilks. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Odell. Film editing: Edward Dmytryk.

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise

Lily: Miriam Hopkins
Mariette Colet: Kay Francis
Gaston Monescu: Herbert Marshall
The Major: Charles Ruggles
François Filiba: Edward Everett Horton
Adolph J. Giron: C. Aubrey Smith
Jacques: Robert Greig

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Grover Jones
Based on a play by Aladar Laszlo
Cinematography: Victor Milner
Art direction: Hans Dreier
Costume design: Travis Banton
Music: W. Franke Harling

It's a measure of the stupidity of American censorship that this gemlike sophisticated comedy could not have been made in Hollywood two years later, after the Production Code was implemented, but was also withheld from re-release for years afterward, all because it dared to indicate that its adult characters were having sex with one another without benefit of clergy and because the blithely larcenous Lily and Gaston were allowed to get off without apparent punishment -- indeed, with considerable reward -- for their crimes. It's essential for anyone who wants to know why Ernst Lubitsch and his so-called "touch" were so highly prized for so long.

Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

Although it's often called the greatest of all screwball comedies, to my mind Bringing Up Baby transcends that label: It's the finest example I know of a nonsense comedy. Screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) and Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman, 1937) usually have one foot in the real world -- the Depression and its Hoovervilles in the case of the former, exploitation journalism in the latter. Bringing Up Baby exists only in a universe where an impossible thing like an "intercostal clavicle"* could exist. Its world is a place where nobody listens to anyone else and everyone seems to be marching to their own drummer. It's what puts Bringing Up Baby in the sublime company of Lewis Carroll's works or James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Fortunately it's more accessible than the latter and at least as much fun as the former. Nonsense is harder to bring off on film than in literature. Cinema by nature is a documentary medium -- one that's assumed to be recording reality -- and has less flexibility than words do. It's also a collaborative medium, which means that everyone involved in writing, directing, and acting in it has to be on the same wave length, or the whole thing will collapse like a soufflé with too many cooks. That's why Bringing Up Baby is almost sui generis: The only other movies that approach the sublimity of its nonsense are some of the ones with the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Even Howard Hawks once admitted that he thought he had gone too far in crafting a comedy with "no normal people in it." Nevertheless, the soufflé continues to rise, thanks in very large part to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, whose four movies together -- the other three were directed by George Cukor: Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- seem to me to demonstrate a more potent teaming than the more iconic one of Hepburn with Spencer Tracy. And then there's the sine qua non of the screwball comedy, a supporting cast of character players like Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, and Fritz Feld. The screenplay was put together by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, from a magazine story by Wilde that Hawks bought and then with their help -- and doubtless much ad-libbing from the cast -- revised out of all recognition. I only hope that whoever came up with the phrase "intercostal clavicle," which Grant delivers with such delight in its rhythms, received a bonus.

*In case you've never thought to look it up, "intercostal" means "between the ribs" and usually refers to the muscles and spaces in the ribcage. The clavicle, or collarbone, sits atop the ribs and therefore can't be between them.