The final stop on our Hollywood pre-Code community cruise lands us in Lubitsch-land. That’s director Ernst Lubitsch and his sublime sex comedy, Trouble in Paradise. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play lovers and thieves attempting to fleece the chic owner of a French perfume company, played by Kay Francis. What ensues is a sort-of modern ménage à trois in the most elegant, innuendo indulgent film comedy of all time. For his pre-screening talk, Michael van den Bos discusses the “Lubitsch Touch” in the director’s approach to sex on screen and his suggestive visual flair, and an appreciation for the beguiling actresses Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis.
When I was small I liked to go to the movies because you could find out what adults did when there weren’t any children in the room. Trouble in Paradise reawakened my old feeling. It is about people who are almost impossibly adult, in that fanciful movie way — so suave, cynical, sophisticated, smooth and sure that a lifetime is hardly long enough to achieve such polish. They glide.
Roger Ebert
This comedy of jewel thieves is itself the prize sparkler of Lubitsch’s enterprising career.
J Hoberman, Village Voice
Steeped in sex.
The Rough Guide to Film
2:00 pm
2:30 pm
Michael van den Bos
Ernst Lubitsch
Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton
USA
1932
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
Samson Raphaelson
Cinematography
Victor Milner
Art Director
Hans Dreier
Also in This Series
Move through the changing fashions and styles in screen acting in the wake of World War II.
Notorious
In the first of our new Film Studies series, Ingrid Bergman is pimped out by US agent Cary Grant to Nazi-sympathizer Claude Rains (ironically the most likeable character in the film). Hitchcock's classic is a prime example of classic Hollywood star power.
A Streetcar Named Desire
"I don't want realism. I want magic!" declares Blanche du Bois, the tragic heroine who meets her nemesis in her sister's husband, Stanley Kowalski, in Tennessee Williams' great play. Brando's performance as Stanley is a turning point in American acting.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A young couple accept an invitation for a nightcap with history professor George (Richard Burton) and his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor). At first it's fun and games. But what passes for caustic wit soon degenerates into vicious mind games.
Nashville
With 26 actors getting more-or-less equal screen time and half of them singing their own tunes, Robert Altman's state-of-the-nation satire on bicentennial USA is a movie that repays multiple views.
Raging Bull
In the throes of a near-fatal drug problem Martin Scorsese made what he believed could be his last movie. Its subject: the Bronx Bull, Jake La Motta, a graceless but indomitable boxer who never quits beating himself up. De Niro has never dug deeper.