Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)

Cast: Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, William Holden, Howard St. John, Frank Otto, Larry Oliver, Barbara Brown, Grandon Rhodes, Claire Carlton. Screenplay: Albert Mannheimer, Garson Kanin, based on a play by Garson Kanin. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Production design: Harry Horner. Film editing: Charles Nelson. Music: Friedrich Hollaender.

Judy Holliday's best actress Oscar win, over the classic performances of Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. and Bette Davis in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve, still ranks as one of the award's more jaw-dropping moments. But if there was ever a case for a three-way tie, this might be it. Because Holliday's Billie Dawn is a great performance, and it lacked the comeback aura of Swanson's or the career-valedictory overtones of Davis's. She had, of course, perfected the role on Broadway, but it's also to her credit that she never seems stagy, even in the confines of what is too often a filmed play dogged a bit by the censors.

A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)

Watched 10/5/2018

Phoebe Frost: Jean Arthur
Erika von Schluetow: Marlene Dietrich
Capt. John Pringle: John Lund
Col. Rufus J. Plummer: Millard Mitchell
Hans Otto Birgel: Peter von Zerneck
Mike: Stanley Prager
Joe: William Murphy

Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari
Based on a story by David Shaw
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Walter H. Tyler
Film editing: Doane Harrison
Music: Friedrich Hollaender

It occurs to me that it might be interesting to watch Roberto Rossellini's neorealistic drama Germany Year Zero (1948) back-to-back with Billy Wilder's satiric romantic comedy A Foreign Affair, if only to illuminate the respective visions of the two directors. Both are set in the ruins of postwar, pre-wall Berlin, using the ruins of the city as a correlative for the evil of Nazism. But for Rossellini, that evil is persistent, a lurking danger. For Wilder it's something that may persist but also something that can be overcome by good will and humor. A Foreign Affair is sometimes accused of a nasty cynicism about politics, and certainly its embodiment of American democracy, the congressional fact-finding delegation, is seen as rather clueless and superficial. But for Wilder, a good joke is our best defense against even such evils as Nazism, just as it was for Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940) and Ernst Lubitsch in To Be or Not to Be (1942) -- and later for Mel Brooks in his 1983 remake of the Lubitsch film and his own The Producers (1967).

Desire (Frank Borzage, 1936)

Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, John Halliday in Desire

Madeleine de Beaupre: Marlene Dietrich
Tom Bradley: Gary Cooper
Carlos Margoli: John Halliday
Mr. Gibson: William Frawley
Aristide Duvalle: Ernest Cossart
Avilia: Akim Tamiroff
Dr. Maurice Pauquet: Alan Mowbray
Aunt Olga: Zeffie Tilbury

Director: Frank Borzage
Screenplay: Edwin Justus Mayer, Waldemar Young, Samuel Hoffenstein
Based on a play by Hans Székely and Robert A. Stemmle
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher
Film editing: William Shea
Costume design: Travis Banton
Music: Friedrich Hollaender

Frank Borzage's Desire was one of the first films Marlene Dietrich made after she and Josef von Sternberg went their separate ways. Though she's still very much in the Sternberg mode in her makeup, her consciousness of the way she's being lighted, and the couture by Travis Banton, she's also softer, funnier, and more human. She also benefits from being re-teamed with Gary Cooper, her co-star in Sternberg's Morocco (1930), and the only leading man with whom she had any real chemistry in the Sternberg films. Desire is still glamorous nonsense, a romantic comedy in which Dietrich plays a jewel thief and Cooper a seemingly naïve American automotive engineer. They meet on the road to Spain, where Cooper's Tom Bradley plans to spend his vacation and Dietrich's Madeleine de Beaupre is meeting up with her accomplice, Carlos Margoli -- a part planned for John Gilbert that went to John Halliday after Gilbert suffered a heart attack. Cooper is delightful as the infatuated American, whose native shrewdness manifests itself eventually. A subtext about the unsettled situation in Europe runs through the film, though there's no direct reference to the civil war brewing in Spain. Tom Bradley is not one to be outwitted by Europeans like Carlos, who, in a conversation about whether the United States would get involved if war breaks out in Europe, observes, "America's a very large country." Tom replies, "Six feet three." Like most good romantic comedies, Desire gets the best out of its supporting players, including Ernest Cossart as the jeweler and Alan Mowbray as the neurologist whom Madeleine plays off against each other to get her hands on the loot, Akim Tamiroff as a police officer, and Zeffie Tilbury as the larcenous, tippling Aunt Olga. Ernst Lubitsch, who produced, also directed some scenes while Borzage was finishing up another film, and his celebrated touch gives Desire some of its vivacity.

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937)

Melvyn Douglas, Herbert Marshall, and Marlene Dietrich in Angel

Lady Maria Barker: Marlene Dietrich

Sir Frederick Barker: Herbert Marshall 

Anthony Halton: Melvyn Douglas 

Graham: Edward Everett Horton 

Wilton: Ernest Cossart 

Grand Duchess Anna Dimitrievna: Laura Hope Crews 

Mr. Greenwood: Herbert Mundin 

Emma: Dennie Moore 

Director: Ernst Lubitsch 

Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Guy Bolton, Russell G. Medcraft 

Based on a play by Melchior Lengyel 

Cinematography: Charles Lang 

Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher 

Film editing: William Shea 

Costume design: Travis Banton

Music: Friedrich Hollaender

In Ernst Lubitsch's Angel, you can almost feel the Production Code censors breathing hotly down the director's neck, driving some of the oxygen out of the room. What's meant to be a light and airy sophisticated comedy, like for example Lubitsch's pre-Code masterpiece Trouble in Paradise (1932), often feels starchy and coy. The emigrée grand duchess played by Laura Hope Crews is clearly a high-class procuress and her "salon" a very upscale brothel that enables a "fling" by Lady Maria Barker with a curiously naïve Anthony Halton. Their affair never seems to get consummated, although there are the usual narrative jumps when the relationship seems to come to the boiling point. And of course the Code's aversion to divorce and abhorrence of any sign that adulterers might get away with it unpunished means that the film must end with Lady Maria and Sir Frederick happily reconciled. We're used to such evasions in Hollywood movies of the 1930s through the 1950s, but it's a little depressing to see them stifle Lubitsch's usually sublime naughtiness. Sometimes it feels as if Marlene Dietrich is to blame: She never really strikes sparks with either Melvyn Douglas or Herbert Marshall -- certainly not the way Greta Garbo does with Douglas in Ninotchka (1939) or Miriam Hopkins with Marshall in Trouble in Paradise. But lovers of Lubitsch have plenty to enjoy in Angel, chiefly the way the director subverts expectations. When Sir Frederick invites Halton, an old war buddy, to dine with him and his wife, who neither man knows is the "Angel" Halton met in Paris and has been rhapsodizing about ever since, we expect a big explosion, especially when the husband points out his wife's picture to her lover. But just as Halton is about to look at the photograph, Lubitsch cuts. We don't see the awkward encounter between wife and lover we expect when she comes downstairs to meet the guest. Instead, we pick up with them later and realize that both have exerted exceptional self-control at the meeting. And we don't see the three of them at the dinner table; instead, Lubitsch takes us into the kitchen, where the servants are wondering why neither Lady Maria nor Mr. Halton has touched their food. Lubitsch leaves to our imagination scenes that other directors would have milked shamelessly. In another example, at their first encounter Maria and Halton are in a Parisian park at night, and after he proclaims his love for her he spots an old woman selling violets. He goes to buy the flowers, but Lubitsch holds the camera on the old woman, whose expressions tell us what's going on: Maria has chosen the moment to disappear and we hear Halton calling out "Angel!" in his pursuit of her. The flower seller sighs and picks up the dropped bouquet, dusts it off, and puts it back with the other flowers, then turns and walks away. Similarly, Lubitsch doesn't linger on the reconciliation scene between Maria and Frederick: They simply walk out the door, headed for Vienna and what we hope is a revived marriage. In the end, these "Lubitsch touches" aren't quite enough to lift Angel out of the middle tier of the director's films, but they constitute its saving grace notes.  

The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel

Prof. Immanuel Rath: Emil Jannings
Lola Lola: Marlene Dietrich
Kiepert, the Magician: Kurt Gerron
Guste Kiepert: Rosa Valetti
Mazeppa, the Strongman: Hans Albers
The Clown: Reinhold Bernt
Director of the School: Eduard von Winterstein
School Caretaker: Hans Roth
Angst, a Student: Rolf Müller
Lohmann, a Student: Roland Varno
Erztum, a Student: Carl Balhaus
Goldstaub, a Student: Robert Klein-Lörk
Innkeeper: Károly Huszár
Rath's Maid: Ilse Fürstenberg

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller, Robert Liebmann
Based on a novel by Heinrich Mann
Cinematography: Günther Rittau
Art direction: Otto Hunte
Film editing: Sam Winston
Music: Friedrich Hollaender

Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel still has some of the earmarks of a film made during the transition from silence to synchronized sound, namely the tendency to hold a shot a beat or two longer than is actually necessary, so the narrative doesn't always move along at the speed we anticipate. But Sternberg is clearly ready for sound, as the final scene shows. The camera tracks back from the dead professor, clutching his old desk so tightly that the caretaker who found his body has been unable to loosen his grip. Meanwhile, we hear the clock striking midnight, with the twelfth stroke barely audible as the screen fades to black. It's a touching moment, made possible by the several shots and sounds of the clock* that occur through the film as a kind of indicator of Rath's decline from precise and punctual to dissipated and tardy. Otherwise the sound on the film is sometimes a little harsh to the ear, which makes Sternberg's relatively sparing use of it welcome. Many scenes are staged in near-silence, letting the action rather than the dialogue carry the story.  Marlene Dietrich's baritone recorded well, which is one reason her career took off when sound was introduced, but early in the film she's allowed to sing in an upper key which is more than a little off-putting. Fortunately, by the time we get to Lola Lola's big number, Friedrich Hollaender's "Ich bin von Kopf zu Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt" (the subtitles use the English language version, "Falling in Love Again" instead of a literal translation), Dietrich is back in the correct register. The Blue Angel thrives on Dietrich's performance, which eclipses Emil Jannings's overacting, though he does provide some genuine pathos toward the end of the film. I don't quite believe the ease with which the professor falls from grace, but I'm not sure whether the fault lies entirely with Jannings or with the screenplay.

*I don't think there's ever an establishing shot of the tower where this clock resides, only closeups of its face and the procession of figures below as the hour strikes. Is it perhaps on the town hall, the Rathaus, in which case there's a kind of submerged pun at work?

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938)

David Niven, Gary Cooper, and Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Nicole De Loiselle: Claudette Colbert
Michael Brandon: Gary Cooper
The Marquis De Loiselle: Edward Everett Horton
Albert De Regnier: David Niven
Aunt Hedwige: Elizabeth Patterson
M. Pepinard: Herman Bing
Kid Mulligan: Warren Hymer
Assistant Hotel Manager: Franklin Pangborn

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Based on a play by Alfred Savoir and its English adaptation by Charlton Andrews
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher
Film editing: William Shea
Music: Werner R. Heymann, Friedrich Hollaender

Almost anything goes in screwball comedy, but why does Bluebeard's Eighth Wife feel just a tad off the mark? It has everything going for it: director, screenwriters, stars and supporting cast. But something seems to be missing. There are those who think Gary Cooper is miscast, but Cooper pulled off similar roles -- lovable eccentrics like Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) and Bertram Potts in Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) -- and director Ernst Lubitsch had established Cooper's gift for sophisticated comedy in Design for Living (1933). There is a certain lack of spark between Cooper and his costar, Claudette Colbert, but that's partly because their characters are not supposed to spark but rather flare. I think the fault lies mainly in the script, which springs Michael Brandon's many previous marriages on us as a surprise and never makes us feel that they're integral to his character. I suspect that the Production Code, which was administered with a heavy hand by Catholic laymen like Joseph I. Breen, blue-penciled so much of the humor surrounding Brandon's divorces that they no longer get the attention they deserve. Still, Cooper and Colbert et al. are fun to watch, and it may be that they are so much more fun to watch in other movies that Bluebeard's Eighth Wife simply suffers by comparison.