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Topic: Ernst Lubitsch


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In the News (Wed 25 Nov 09)

  
  Reference.com/Encyclopedia/Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (Berlin, January 28, 1892 – November 30, 1947 in Hollywood), was a German-born film director.
Lubitsch had turned his back on his father's business to enter the theater, and by 1911 he was a member of Max Reinhardt's Deutches Theater.
She allowed Lubitsch to sign with Warner Bros., where he established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish and delightful films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926).
www.reference.com /browse/wiki/Ernst_Lubitsch   (660 words)

  
 The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch: Biography
Gradually, Lubitsch abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and in 1918 he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mummie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), a tragic drama starring Pola Negri.
Lubitsch's next American project, The Marriage Circle (1924), was a resounding triumph and the progenitor of a long succession of commercial and critical hits that made "the Lubitsch Touch'' a household phrase.
But none could duplicate Lubitsch at his best -- his incisive pictorial detail, his perfect timing, the nuances of gesture and facial expression that enabled his performers to reveal in a single brief shot the psychology of the characters they were playing.
www.lubitsch.com /biography.html   (843 words)

  
 "Three Women"
Lubitsch goes the familiar triangle domestic drama one better, for this story involves the romantic affairs of one man and three women, and the fact that two of the characters are mother and daughter lends additional interest.
Lubitsch's direction is marked by the same subtle touches, the same unerring ability to portray human nature, its fine points and its frailties; the delightful touches of comedy, the power to register this points by short and constantly changing scenes and shots focused on exceedingly limited areas, all the while preserving excellent continuity.
This story, produced by Ernst Lubitsch, is a sophisticated one; of the emotional struggle of a woman and her grown daughter over a man. One is a widow, world weary, afraid to grow old and a typical lover of love.
www.stanford.edu /~gdegroat/PF/reviews/tw.htm   (1841 words)

  
 Lubitsch: a German Who Conquered Hollywood
Ernst Lubitsch was "a man of pure cinema", as Alfred Hitchcock said.
Ernst Lubitsch is best known for his comedies made in Hollywood, but from 1911 to 1922 he was a major figure in German filmmaking.
In March 1947, Ernst Lubitsch was given a special Academy Award for his "distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture." It was very timely, wasn't it.
www.germanculture.com.ua /library/weekly/aa012601a.htm   (723 words)

  
 Something Old, Nothing New: Les Lubitsches
But Lubitsch dumped all the songs from the operetta, using them as background music only, hired Straus to write a few new songs in a more '30s style, cast mostly nonmusical performers, and, again, relied on dialogue scenes, visual scenes, and background music for most of the big moments, and not singing or dancing.
Lubitsch had Rodgers and Hart on The Merry Widow, too, but he didn't use any of the new songs they wrote, and Hart's contribution wound up limited to putting very simple new lyrics to some very short snatches of the original Lehar songs.
Lubitsch didn't like giving performers too much freedom; he acted out every scene for every performer, with the result that every actor in a Lubitsch film adopts certain mannerisms of line delivery and body language.
zvbxrpl.blogspot.com /2005/01/les-lubitsches.html   (932 words)

  
 Lubitsch, Ernst on Encyclopedia.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Lubitsch turned to directing in 1914 and became known for such silent films as the drama Madame Du Barry (Passion) and the comedy Die Puppe (The Doll), both released in 1919.
Lubitsch made more than 40 German films before he was invited to the United States to direct Mary Pickford in Rosita (1923).
Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be: the question of simulation in cinema.(Ernst Lubitsch)
www.encyclopedia.com /html/L/LubitschE1.asp   (359 words)

  
 Ernst Lubitsch: The Actor vs. the Character
This acting style, which occurs throughout Lubitsch’s sound films (and, in spirit at least, in the silent films as well, where actions and gestures are similarly discrete), reminds us that Lubitsch had his start in the theater.
But Lubitsch so desires direct communion with the audience that he devises acting strategies to produce it even when the character is not a stand-in for the audience's perspective.
Here Lubitsch is playing with the conventions of the musical comedy, according to which the characters must reconcile; the actors therefore abandon psychology and comply with genre.
www.panix.com /~sallitt/lubitsch.html   (1837 words)

  
 I Don't Want to be a Man!
Lubitsch's career in Hollywood would last 24 years during which time he made ten silent and 17 sound features as well as producing a number of additional features at Paramount Studios while he was head of production.
Lubitsch was a prolific filmmaker and a driven workaholic.
Lubitsch's films are populated with strong-minded, independent women, from the heroines played by Oswald and Pola Negri in the silent films, to those played by Jeanette MacDonald, Claudette Colbert and Carole Lombard in the sound era.
www.sensesofcinema.com /contents/cteq/02/22/dont_want.html   (2283 words)

  
 Lady Windermere's Fan
Ernst Lubitsch is faithful to Wilde's original, retaining its four-act structure (adding, as a kind of prologue, the back-story alluded to in the play's dialogue), and its primary locations, opening out just once for a trip to the races – a sequence that contains the film's most flamboyant visual coups, most notably Mrs.
Lubitsch elaborates on Wilde's insight into life's role-playing by literally staging the action – characters are frequently framed against curtains, as if performing before a proscenium arch; or making exits and surprise entrances through huge doors like wings; or looking down on action from windows as if from a box.
Lubitsch, in Germany during the Great War and its chaotic aftermath, had seen change, the very destruction of a culture Wilde had called for, but couldn't be quite so sanguine about its results.
www.sensesofcinema.com /contents/cteq/04/lady_windermeres_fan.html   (1527 words)

  
 Lubitsch and the "You've Got Mail" Connection > German-Hollywood   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) came to Hollywood from his native Berlin in 1922—at the request of Mary Pickford.
German Ernst Lubitsch produced and directed the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner, the original film upon which 1998's You've Got Mail is based.
Lubitsch's second wife, Vivian, had suggested the title “The Little Shop Around the Corner,” but her husband dropped the “little” when he and Samson Raphaelson began work on the script (based on the play “Parfumerie” by Nikolaus Laszlo).
www.germanhollywood.com /gotmail.html   (797 words)

  
 Ernst Lubitsch's Magic Touch / Filmmaker's ironic comedies always captivated his audiences
The films of Ernst Lubitsch are often described as having been made with "the Lubitsch touch." It's a phrase that makes it sound as if each movie was hit with a dash of nutmeg.
Lubitsch, who died in 1947 at the age of 55, made self-conscious, deceptively formal movies composed of weirdly felicitous dances between lust and propriety that collapsed ironic circumstances and emotional sincerity with a song or lightning-paced screwball.
Lubitsch was a humanist and only a mild satirist, while Sturges was a full-blown troublemaker, taking satire to the brink of farce.
www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/17/PK165107.DTL   (936 words)

  
 [No title]
Lubitsch stepped off the American steamship from Bremen he has been followed by newspaper reporters and film men, who have lingered to hear from his own lips the question of his success.
Lubitsch came and I forgot the background in my interest in the young German, who is about 29 years old and has a smile that is infectious.
Lubitsch was highly amused at the questions asked about the papier- mache sets, which we have been told are a part of his historical settings.
www.public.asu.edu /~bruce/Taylor67.txt   (12245 words)

  
 Harvard Film Archive: Directors in Focus
One of the few filmmakers to achieve international acclaim in both the silent and sound eras, Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) was the son of a Berlin tailor who began his career as an actor in Max Reinhardt’s legendary theater company and on the side appeared in early German comic one-reelers.
Among the finest of Lubitsch’s American films of the silent era, Lady Windermere’s Fan is a sophisticated adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play that injects the Lubitsch touch into the classic comedy of manners.
Retitled Passion to bolster its star’s appeal, the film focuses on the romantic and political intrigues that reverberated throughout the court of Louis XV and reimagines the origins of the French Revolution in the libidinous shifts of fortune of Madame Dubarry (Negri), mistress to the king.
www.harvardfilmarchive.org /calendars/03_fall/lubitsch.html   (658 words)

  
 The DVD Journal | Reviews : Trouble in Paradise: The Criterion Collection
Lubitsch might have been ripe for rediscovery if the film-school set had been able to talk to him, but unfortunately the master died a little too young, passing (reportedly while in the act of sex) of a heart attack in 1947 at the ripe age of 55.
Lubitsch's films all have a European elegance to them that marks their quality.
Lubitsch is of the school of "invisible director," the kind who feel they do their job best if the audience doesn't notice them at all.
www.dvdjournal.com /reviews/t/troubleinparadise_cc.shtml   (1642 words)

  
 Jewish and Israel News from New York - The Jewish Week   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
The forces that shaped Ernst Lubitsch are unmistakable: the heady atmosphere of sophisticated Berlin in the aftermath of the disasters of World War I, the wit peculiar to that city’s burgeoning and upwardly mobile Jewish community, and the liberated sexual attitudes of her theater and cabaret circles.
Fools, yes, in abundance, Lubitsch’s heroes — preening male egos all — are frequently foolish and much of the action in Lubitsch’s movies consists of his heroines deflating their pretensions.
The Lubitsch Touch,” a 34-film retrospective of the work of Ernst Lubitsch, will be playing at Film Forum (209 W. Houston St.) from June 13-July 3.
www.thejewishweek.com /news/newscontent.php3?artid=8011   (996 words)

  
 Barnes & Noble.com - The Marriage Circle -- Ernst Lubitsch - VHS
This was the German-born director's first American sex farce, yet the famed "Lubitsch touch" is already in evidence as he demonstrates his legendary flair for handling erotically charged material in a way that celebrates desire and keeps moralizing to a minimum.
Though Lubitsch is better known for his later sound films, this important early work shows his mastery of silent cinema, with sparing use of inter-titles, sophisticated editing, and mise-en-scène that tells the story with a level of subtlety that was striking for its time and still stands up today.
The first of Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated sex farces, The Marriage Circle was reportedly Lubitsch's favorite film; he would remake it (and improve upon it tenfold) in 1932 as the sprightly musical One Hour With You, with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.
video.barnesandnoble.com /search/product.asp?ean=14381942132&itm=10   (453 words)

  
 Barnes & Noble.com - Shop Around The Corner -- Ernst Lubitsch - DVD - Black & White
Lubitsch orchestrates the performances of Stewart and Sullivan, an unlikely-looking couple with surprisingly good chemistry, as well as those of a supporting cast that includes Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, Felix Bressart, and William Tracy.
The film's many subplots are carried by Frank Morgan as the kindhearted shopkeeper and by Joseph Schildkraut as a backstabbing employee whose comeuppance is sure to result in spontaneous applause from the audience.
Directed with comic delicacy by Ernst Lubitsch, this was later remade in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime, and in 1998 as You've Got Mail.
video.barnesandnoble.com /search/product.asp?ean=12569566927&cds2Pid=8265   (724 words)

  
 Moviecrazed
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was the first of the great European directors to establish himself in Hollywood and by far the most influential.
Having made hit ribald comedies and triumphant spectacles in his native Germany, Lubitsch revolutionized American movies with a sui generis subtlety, style, visual wit, and sophisticated innuendo — “The Lubitsch Touch” (as definitive a trademark as “Master of Suspense” would be for Hitchcock), inventing the modern movie musical and romantic comedy in the process.
Years after Lubitsch’s death, Wilder (an up-close observer as a two-time scenarist for The Master) remarked, “For years we all tried to find the secret of ‘The Lubitsch Touch.’ If we were lucky, we’d sometimes make a film like Lubitsch.
www.moviecrazed.com /ny_only/forumernstlub.html   (1437 words)

  
 Ernst Lubitch: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Libraries
"Ernst Lubitsch." In: The moviemakers / Alice Fleming.
Lubitsch worked with many talanted actors but, nonetheless, centered his works around their lead actresses.
In his silent version of 'Lady Windermere's fan', Ernst Lubitsch substitutes visual humour for the epigrams of Wilde's play, faltering only from a lack of understanding of the final scene.
www.lib.berkeley.edu /MRC/lubitsch.html   (1994 words)

  
 New York State Writers Institute - Cluny Brown Film Notes   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Lubitsch's great films of the 1930's (Design for Living, Trouble in Paradise, One Hour with You) were castles in air, founded on the sheerest excuses for plot, their brazen transparency part of the legendary "Lubitsch touch," a touch so light it was weightless.
Simply put, Lubitsch was hurting too much in 1946 to offer up the frivolities of his earlier films with the same joyous abandon.
Lubitsch's heroine is emphatically a girl of the working class, and the desire she arouses in Andrew Carmel (Peter Lawford), the scion of a pleasantly sluggish family of the gentry, is a sly challenge to the old immutable barriers of class in England.
www.albany.edu /writers.inst/fnf04n10.html   (757 words)

  
 Amazon.ca: The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg [IMPORT]: Video   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this sentimental romantic drama, a famous operetta about a young prince who falls in love with a commoner.
This is real tearjerker material, but Lubitsch's sensibility brings rollicking fun and a playful sense of sexual discovery in the first half, and pathos to the bittersweet romantic drama that ends the film.
Lubitsch's trademark flashes of visual wit are already apparent in this early effort - a dachsund saunters into a garden where Karl Heinrich is engaged in wooing Kathi, and turns around in an instant and departs in knowing discretion after seeing the amorous pair.
www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/6302004489   (1393 words)

  
 German 43: Resources: Biographies: Lubitsch, Ernst
One of the great geniuses of comedy in the cinema, Lubitsch was the most successful of the many émigrés and exiles in his transition from Weimar Germany to Hollywood.
But it was not until 1919 that Lubitsch got his first big directorial break with a string of European hits: Die Austernprinzessin, Madame Dubarry, and Die Puppe.
Through a series of social satires he created the cinematic genre of the sophisticated comedy, and his trademark became 'the Lubitsch touch'—a combination of sharp socio-psychological analysis and indirect comment.
www.dartmouth.edu /~germ43/resources/biographies/lubitsch-e.html   (173 words)

  
 Amazon.com: Ernst Lubitsch : Laughter in Paradise: Books: Scott Eyman   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) made elegant, warmly human comedies exuding sexual sophistication, yet in his personal life, notes Eyman, the German-born film director was vulnerable and almost naive.
Lubitsch's second wife, aristocratic Vivian Gaye, who considered him vulgar, was widely viewed as a gold digger by his friends.
Lubitsch produced, directed, and was the uncredited co-writer on some of the most stylish and sophisticated comedies ever made, including Trouble in Paridise (1932), Ninotchka (1939), and To Be or Not To Be (1942).
www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801865581?v=glance   (1000 words)

  
 Salon Entertainment | Home Movies by Charles Taylor: Camp classic
Ernst Lubitsch's legendary comedy stirred controversy by pitting vain Polish actors against buffoonish Nazi killers.
Lubitsch includes a brilliant and daring joke on the vanity of actors when Carole Lombard -- who plays Joseph's wife and leading lady, Maria -- makes her first entrance in a slinky silk gown and announces that she thinks it would make a great impression in the concentration-camp scene.
Lubitsch had been a famous actor in his native Germany, and a cruel caricature of his squat, hawk-nosed profile had illustrated a Nazi propaganda poster on how to recognize a Jew.
www.salon.com /ent/movies/tayl/1998/11/02tayl.html   (1385 words)

  
 Lubitsch and the "You've Got Mail" Connection 2   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
Whereas Lubitsch's story was carefully confined to just the close-knit group in Mr.
Nora Ephron's homage to Lubitsch and Jimmy Stewart is not a bad movie, but it could have been a better one if it hadn't strayed quite so far from the master's vision.
The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch by Scott Breivold.
www.germanhollywood.com /gotmail2.html   (515 words)

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