The Lady in Ermine

#30 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. Well, at least I learned what ermine is, that's neat. That being said, I was actually somewhat enchanted with That Lady in Ermine, Ernst Lubitsch's final feature film that he was unable to complete due to his untimely death, a task that Otto Preminger, who had completed…

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Cluny Brown

#13 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. Ernst Lubitsch's final full film, Cluny Brown is a light comedy full of innuendo in pre-war Britain. Not his best work but reminiscent of what made him so wonderful as a filmmaker in general (much like Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, did something similar at the…

A Royal Scandal

Ernst Lubitsch was due to direct this screenplay that he helped develop with the screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer, but he fell too ill to actually go beyond the pre-production process. The executives at Twentieth Century Fox tapped studio director Otto Preminger, another European émigré to Hollywood, to take over the production, and I think this…

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

#12 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. This late period of Lubitsch's career (he only had one more full feature film in him after this before his untimely death in the early days of production on The Lady in Ermine) is a largely subdued, melancholic, and charming period. I do wonder if he was…

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

#9 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. It's interesting to contrast Ernst Lubitsch's effort at directly dealing with Nazism against Fritz Lang's. Lubitsch had the advantage of leaving Germany in the early 20s, well before the rise of Hitler while Lang left in 1933 right as they claimed power over the legislature and Hitler's…