DIE PUPPE / THE DOLL (1919)

Wildly prolific in his early German period (acting & directing), Ernst Lubitsch tossed off six feature films in the year between two of his signature international hits emphasizing the human foibles of historical figures: PASSION/MADAME DU BARRY/’19 and DECEPTION/ANNA BOLEYN/’20. And sometime during the making of those six films, dormant cinematic genes got activated, giving a striking leap in his filmmaking chops from DU BARRY to BOLEYN. Lubitsch is all but fully formed in the last of these six films, also his last acting gig, the comic Arabian Nights fable SUMURUN*, made directly before BOLEYN; but the others show gains and losses. (Three of the six seen here.) This one, a quirky stylized comedy, offers a good look at Lubitsch in chrysalis, with clever staging ideas and new compositional control alternating with flatly handled farce & chases. But an enjoyable one-hour watch, especially in the fine F.W. Murnau Foundation restoration out on KINO. Lubitsch personally opens the film, setting up a doll’s house acting space before giving up the stage to life-size actors who enter a whimsical full-scale set. In the story, a Baron’s nephew runs away from a duchy’s-worth of eager young brides to hide out in a monastery of well-fed monks before finding a ‘living doll’ to wed. What he doesn’t know is that the master dollmaker has failed with his animated mannequin and its his real life daughter who’s playing puppet. Much of this is just too silly or too frantic, but a lot holds up with a neat comic edge, though leading lady Ossi Oswalda is even more delightfully inventive in Lubitsch’s shrewd OYSTER PRINCESS made shortly before this. Neither perhaps essential viewing, but a real treat for Lubitsch mavens.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lubitsch gives E.T.A. Hoffmann story credit. Does this come from the same mechanical doll story Jacques Offenbach used in his TALES OF HOFFMANN opera?

DOUBLE-BILL: *Before decent prints were discovered & restored, SUMURUN’s mad comic adventures, along with Lubitsch’s high relief perf, were wrongly written off. The film, as well as Lubitsch in action, a treat!