Ernst Lubitsch stepped away from his witty Early Talkie operettas for this devastating, if uneven, post-WWI drama. Taken from a play by Maurice Rostand (son of Edmond, of CYRANO fame), the script is by Lubitsch regular Samson Raphaelson who also wrote the equally underestimated ANGEL/’37 in addition to SMILING LIEUTENANT; ONE HOUR WITH YOU; TROUBLE IN PARADISE; MERRY WIDOW; SHOP AROUND THE CORNER; HEAVEN CAN WAIT. Critically lauded/commercially scorned (hence the title change), it opens superbly with a Paris montage celebrating the one-year Armistice anniversary: November 11, 1919. Parades and services, cannon fire and recovery wards. Stunning stuff. But little comfort to Phillips Holmes, a soldier who can’t get past his guilt over the man he killed at war’s end. In a fit of contrition, he visits the man’s home in Germany where he’s spotted leaving flowers on the grave. Meeting the man’s family & fiancé, he loses his nerve to confess, and lets them assume what they will: they knew each other in Paris, they were good friends, they played violin together. Dramatically, this ongoing misunderstanding is the stuff of farce, played here for emotion & tears, though Lubitsch tucks in some charming comic asides while also getting an exceptionally powerful turn from Lionel Barrymore as the boy’s father, ashamed of his own early enthusiasm for the war. If only the two leads, Holmes & Nancy Carroll as the fiancé didn’t play their scenes as if doing penance for the witty touches elsewhere. Made before films were underscored, you can see Holmes come to life in a scene set in the dead boy’s bedroom, now preserved as a sort of shrine, where a constant ticking clock supplies the missing music cue. And what a difference it makes! Suddenly Holmes has screen presence. Not enough to make the film a Lubitsch/Raphaelson classic, just enough to make it unmissable.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Wonderfully shot by Victor Milner (the poor man was moving back & forth between Lubitsch & Cecil B. DeMille at the time), watch for a few zoom lens effects, rare at the time.
DOUBLE-BILL: François Ozon’s fine if uneven FRANTZ/’16, an elaboration of the same source material, changes POV halfway along as the fiancé leaves her German village for France. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/frantz-2016.html)
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