A book I love, The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything, declared this movie to be the greatest classic comedy of all time. I had to see it. I had seen a movie (unless I’m mistaken) by Lubitsch during college, and seeing it on a large screen, surrounded by other moviegoers, hungry for new experiences, I found it delightful and satisfying—but which Lubitsch movie was it?
This one I found less so, though I assume it’s because I didn’t appreciate it, wasn’t able to accommodate myself to its rhythms. True, there was no character to love, but more objectively, I found the jokes unfunny: when an actor recites “Hath not a Jew eyes,” in order to protest anti-Semitism in a comic vein, there seems something significantly off-key, and the anti-Nazi sentiments, expressed jokingly, have a bada-bing feeling that seems strained. A Wikipedia article I just consulted quotes Lubitsch as saying that he is satirizing actors for remaining actors no matter what is going on around them, and that idea explains a lot, but such an intention seems an odd response to the Nazi takeover of Poland, and I don't blame myself for not taking this view. I’m sure I’m just not getting it, and should see it again, with this interpretation in mind. Still, there's that problem of how to make the nursemaid in Romeo and Juliet boring without being boring; how does one make actors shallow and a little stupid without seeming shallow and a little stupid? Does Lubitsch solve the puzzle or not?
No comments:
Post a Comment