Like you, Sumurun didn’t do much for me. While I love silent films, I have a difficult time enjoying the period dramas and opera epics (outside of Abel Gance films, and not including long films that are epic in scope - Les Vampires, Mabuse, etc.), which may be why a bunch of the other silent Lubitschs that fit this framework didn’t spark for me. Anne Boleyn fared about the same, though I appreciated the performances and found it to be more aesthetically appealing, it was overlong and simmered out in the second half.Rayon Vert wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2020 8:36 pmMaybe it's because I'm not the biggest silent film buff, but Sumurun and The Wildcat I really found hard to get through. (Like others here, I thought The Doll and especially The Oyster Princess were great.) I'm curious about what your opinions will be.
The Wild Cat, however, was an absolute delight. I can’t say I enjoyed it the most in the set, but the relentless lampooning across a cast of characters, groups, and setpieces never failed to make me smile. Similar to other films in this set that featured characters chaotically running around (the best being the extended one-shot at the beginning of The Doll), this animated running gag didn’t get old. The musings of puzzled bodies even from afar in their idiosyncratic expressions was constantly exciting and funny. The score was also easily the best in the whole set, imbuing extravagance and grand tones to elevate the comic pandemonium into something greater.
Ich möchte kein Mann sein was similar to The Merry Jail, in how Lubitsch takes gender roles and perversely manipulates them to both show the ridiculousness of their rigid associations as well as the ridiculousness of the behaviors themselves (watching the father drink away his troubles following Ossi’s play-acting of this is a wallop of a dis on the coping skill itself). Ossi is phenomenal here and the physical comedy from her sells this one hard. Even though the film loses some steam as she integrates herself into the main plot as a cross-dressing trick, her performance still held my attention while the comedic beats hit less frequently.
The Doll was a cute and light romp, as promised, but it was The Oyster Princess that rose far above all the others as the ultimate farce. The film manifests as both a misunderstanding-inspired partner swap a la So This Is Paris and an absurdist comedy that wallows in a range of dry to manic reactions, an interplay between father and daughter that feels right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. There are some very clever bits, my favorite being
And because now I can do this,
Top 5 silents
1. The Oyster Princess
2. The Wild Cat
3. So This Is Paris
4. The Doll
5. Romeo and Juliet in the Snow
Top 5 sound
1. To Be or Not To Be
2. Heaven Can Wait
3. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
4. Trouble in Paradise
5. Cluny Brown