(In Broken Lullaby, from famed director Ernst Lubitsch, Pa...)
In Broken Lullaby, from famed director Ernst Lubitsch, Paul Renard (Phillips Holmes) has returned from World War I triumphant, but is haunted by the death of a German soldier at his hands. Determined to make amends, he travels to the dead mans hometown and meets his former fiancée, Elsa (Nancy Carroll), and grieving father (Lionel Barrymore). Rather than reveal his true identity, Paul tells the two that he was a former friend of the deceased soldier. As Elsa and Paul draw closer and the family embraces him as one of their own, Pauls conscience is torn between revealing his past guilt and embracing a future he never knew possible.
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(As nervy as it is hilarious, this screwball masterpiece f...)
As nervy as it is hilarious, this screwball masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise) stars Jack Benny (The Jack Benny Program) and, in her final screen appearance, Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey) as husband-and-wife thespians in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who become caught up in a dangerous spy plot. TO BE OR NOT TO BE is a Hollywood film of the boldest black humor, which went into production soon after the U.S. entered World War II. Lubitsch manages to brilliantly balance political satire, romance, slapstick, and urgent wartime suspense in a comic high-wire act that has never been equaled.
Ernst Lubitsch was a German American film director, producer, writer, and actor. He is recognized as one of the comic masters of the cinema. A brilliant craftsman, he is chiefly admired for his witty political satires and inventive bedroom farces.
Background
Ernst Lubitsch was born on January 29, 1892 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch (Russian: Любич), a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno in the Russian Empire and his mother from Wriezen (Oder), outside Berlin.
Career
As a young man, he worked as assistant to the noted theatrical director Max Reinhardt and later established himself as a talented actor in silent films, many of which he directed. Beginning in 1913, Lubitsch played the role of a clothing store salesman in a series of short movies, achieving a popularity with German audiences comparable to that of Charlie Chaplin in America. The Eyes of the Mummy (1918) was Lubitsch's first feature-length film; that same year he directed his own version of Carmen, called Gypsy Blood. The popularity of his two large-scale historical productions, Passion (1919), the story of Madame de Pompadour starring Pola Negri, and Deception (1920), about Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, brought him numerous offers from American motion picture studios. In 1924 he left for Hollywood. Coming under the influence of Chaplin and of Cecil B. DeMille's sophisticated comedies, Lubitsch established his creative independence by hiring his own German staff and embarking on a series of hilarious, visually imaginative bedroom farces. The most memorable were The Marriage Circle (1924), Kiss Me Again (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926). In 1924 Lubitsch directed a scathing satire of the Hollywood film industry, Forbidden Paradise. Lubitsch's facility with the camera and his love of slapstick made him an ideal silent-film director, and his rapport with actors and his gift for verbal subtleties rendered him equally adept with the sound medium. His first talking movies, the Maurice Chevalier-Jeanette MacDonald series, were stylishly entertaining. However, his later work gained in wit and intellectual sophistication. Monte Carlo (1930) and Trouble in Paradise (1932) are superior, the latter considered by most critics to be his finest film. In 1939 Lubitsch directed Greta Garbo in his most popular production, Ninotchka. Shop around the Corner (1940), a modest drama notable for its atmosphere and vivid characterization, and To Be or Not To Be (1942), a controversial comedy described by Lubitsch as "a satirization of the Nazi spirit and the foul Nazi humor, " are among the director's most creative efforts. His last production, Heaven Can Wait (1943), is an intelligent exploration of a rogue's life while he waits at the gates of hell.
Quotations:
"There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one. "
"The job of the director is to suggest two plus two. Let the viewer say four. "
"It is the task of the scenarist to invent little pieces of business that are so characteristic and give so deep an insight into his creatures, that their personalities clearly and organically unfold before the eyes of the audience so that the latter feel that the actions of these people are contingent upon their characters, that there exists some kind of a logical fate, and that nothing is left to mere accident or coincidence. "
"Any good movie is filled with secrets. If a director doesn't leave anything unsaid, it's a lousy picture. If a picture's unsaid, it's a lousy picture. If a picture is good, it's mysterious, with things unsaid. "
"Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Leaving Lubitsch's funeral, Billy Wilder ruefully said, "No more Lubitsch. " William Wyler responded, "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures. "
Connections
His first wife was Helene Kraus. On July 27, 1935 he had married British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Lubitsch, on October 27, 1938.