"Trouble in Paradise": Invisible Style

While I’m more than half way into my month long tribute of Ernst Lubitsch, I’m still wonderously curious about his style. Perhaps it’s because his style is invisible, you can’t pinpoint it which is ironic since Lubitsch was all about style. I recently viewed what many people consider his masterpiece and the film he considered his most stylish “Trouble in Paradise” to further investigate his craft. I found that while watching it something happened and I wasn’t looking at the movie through a critical lens and I was watching it as a simple spectator feeling the kind of emotions I do when I watch a really wonderful film.

We begin in Venice where a thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) falls in love with a pickpocket named Lily (Miriam Hopkins). When the two first meet, they are each playing the part of high society while trying to steal from the other, when they are found out, they realize it’s true love.

The two form a partnership, and we are taken to their most recent target Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) who owns a very priceless diamond purse. Gaston steals the purse and when Mme. Colet offers a reward for its return, he has the audacity, and confidence to return it to her. Gaston soon charms himself into Mme. Colet’s life and becomes her personal secretary, but it’s all in his greater scheme to steal her fortune. The problem arises when Gaston falls for Mme. Colet hard, and leaves a jealous Lily to wonder if he could be unfaithful to her.

When I watch “Trouble in Paradise” I forget about what makes it great. No I take that back, I don’t forget, the greatness is all in its charm, its sophistication, and its unpredictability that is all there on the screen. In his introduction to the film Peter Bogdanovich talks about how sophistication was a big part of movies being made back then, and it’s difficult to understand how Hollywood (and I would add society in general) would go the different direction.

When you look at the characters of Gaston, Lily, and Mariette they lead lives that others could only dream of and Lubitsch romanticised it, they did live in a certain paradise, and like the title suggests the biggest problem in their world is a romantic triangle. This goes back to Lubitsch usually using a superficial situation in order to further examine his characters. His films were always about character which made them break out of the confines of a convoluted situation. Had Gaston, Lily and Mariette been just charicatures, the film wouldn’t achieve anything special, but since Lubitsch looked at them as human beings, there was much more at stake. Much like he did with Claudette Colbert in “The Smiling Lieutenant”, Kay Francis’ Mariette isn’t just the other woman, she’s got style and it’s no wonder Gaston falls for her, and in this case you might think that Mariette just might be a better match than Lily.

The finale where the three subjects are finally put in a room together never falls into melodrama, which is what you would expect, but is done with more wit and sophistication. The three characters are treated maturely and Lubitsch is too smart to treat them any less.

Lubitsch was well known for working with his scriptwriters from the very beginning of the film, and in “Trouble in Paradise” he had perhaps his best collaborator during the sound period, Samson Raphalson. The two worked on a number of films where Lubitsch would think of a scenario while Raphalson would write the dialogue. Perhaps what keeps their films fresh and relevant today is they would always find ways in doing scenes differently, in other words they would work on improving a clichéd idea. Take the famous opening shot in “Trouble in Paradise” where we see a man with a garbage can, we follow him as the camera pans over to a gondola. The man dumps the trash on the gondola as he floats away on it singing a love song, and we soon find ourselves in Venice. The film could’ve just opened on a wide shot of Venice, but Lubitsch is making a comment on the theme of the film and its characters, they themselves belong in the lower garbage heap class, but as we see in the film are free to live in the more romantic world.

But I suppose what fascinates me most about “Trouble in Paradise” is how you come to like these people and how unlike other romantic comedies of its kind, there is heartache at the end as Gaston can’t be with both women. Lubitsch knows how to handle the sadness of the situation, but he doesn’t leave the viewer in despair as the final shot is shown.

Here I am left at the end of the review with so much more to talk about. I shall just mention other joys of this film that I love to experience such as the site of seeing comedic actors Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles share the screen together as unlucky suitors of Kay Francis. I love listening to the two men’s distinct voices as they bicker and try to one-up eachother for the affections of Mariette.

I also wanted to discuss how Lubitsch cleverly incorporates the troubled times as he distinguishes the different class systems. The film was made at the height of the great depression and even though the film rarely leaves its high society, Lubitsch does make room for some social commentary. But perhaps instead of going into that, I’ll just take a cue from Lubitsch and stick to the main themes.

“Trouble in Paradise” has been called the first great romantic comedy of the sound period. Not too soon after this film, we would see Hawks’ “Twentieth Century”, and Capra’s “It Happened One Night”. Screwball comedy would become the norm as broader performances and outlandish situations would eclipse the more subtle and nuanced Lubitsch comedy. Lubitsch would go on to more success in the sound period, but it’s “Trouble in Paradise” that other films of its kind are measured by.