Broken Lullaby

From Ernst Lubitsch, the iconic director of Trouble in Paradise, The Merry Widow, Angel, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ninotchka, comes the Pre-Code drama Broken Lullaby, the most emotionally powerful film in the master’s extraordinary oeuvre. French violinist Paul Renard (Phillips Holmes, An American Tragedy) 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 man’s hometown and meets his former fiancée, Elsa (Nancy Carroll, The Kiss Before the Mirror), and grieving father (Lionel Barrymore, Duel in the Sun). 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, Paul’s conscience is torn between revealing his past guilt and embracing a future he never knew possible. While Lubitsch put his sophisticated touch on many of filmdom’s greatest comedies, he also showed his brilliant command of drama with the beautifully crafted, profoundly moving Broken Lullaby.