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Trouble in Paradise
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"If there’s something missing, that signifies
trouble in paradise!" Is there any wonder that the radically-minded
critics of the 1960s gleefully seized on one of Ernst Lubitsch’s greatest masterpieces
(in a career chock-full of masterpieces) – for its high-style cynicism, its
insistence on money as the basis of all interpersonal exchange (including the
erotic), its effortless foregrounding of every manipulative trick and corny
convention reigning in 1930s Hollywood?
The final scene of Trouble
in Paradise runs for scarcely 45 seconds. It is a simple framing of two
actors – Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall (both superb) – sitting in an
obviously artificial car prop, with a back-projected bit of filmed traffic.
Only one shot, and only one, excited word over the musical score, uttered by
Hopkins just before the closing fade-out: “Gaston!” So simple – and yet many of
the techniques that made Lubitsch such a masterful director of comedy coalesce
in this exhilarating ending.
The action films of Fritz Lang or Samuel Fuller
usually follow a rule of thumb for exposition: start right in the middle of
something physical (an explosion or robbery) to hook the spectator, and save
the explanations in dialogue for the following, more sedate scene. Lubitsch
went one better in the genre of comedy by mirroring this trope in an inverse
symmetry for the ending: the penultimate scene may contain a lot of smart gab,
but the finale should be, as completely as possible, wordless, expressing
itself only in looks and gestures.
This is exactly how Trouble in Paradise is built. The scene before the ending has
traced a complicated denouement, sorting out the difficult triangle formed by
the thieving lovers, Lily (Hopkins) and Gaston Monescu (Marshall), plus the
society lady who has come between them, Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Francis).
This scene is itself a small masterpiece of twists and surprises: Lily at first
righteously refuses the generous donation of 100,000 francs that Mariette has
offered (in a roundabout way) in order to “buy” Gaston from her, but Lily
manages to recuperate it before making her grand exit out the door (Lubitsch
loved doors).
Elaborate off-screen action ensues: Mariette is sad as
she hears Gaston’s footsteps die away, but perks up when she hears those same
footsteps returning. But it turns out to be a last, florid goodbye from Gaston
(“It could have been marvellous … divine … wonderful”) – capped off by his
frank admission that he has also surreptitiously stolen an expensive string of
pearls (“Your gift to her”).
Now the film dissolves into its crowning 45 seconds. A
tense stand-off between the pair: Lily angry, with her arms folded; Gaston
watching her, helpless. Then he smiles, as if remembering he has the gift of
pearls up his sleeve. But his gestures quickly become frantic, searching in one
pocket after another: it’s gone! He freezes, and they look at each other; Lily
then unfolds her arms and slowly produces the “gift” she has already secretly
stolen from him. As she places it in her purse, the music surges and quickens,
and Gaston smiles in appreciation. Or is it another kind of smile? He modulates
into a poker face as she, too, realises that something else is missing from her
purse. He produces the 100,000 francs from his pocket, and triumphantly jams
them into her open purse (the purse-lap combo has a clear erotic connotation).
All tension relieved, they threw their arms around each and kiss. She cries:
“Gaston!”
This is not the first time that Lily has cried out
Gaston’s name with such orgasmic joy. (Hopkins had already proved in a previous
Lubitsch gem, The Smiling Lieutenant [1931], how suggestively and subversively she can deliver even the most
innocent or banal line.) In fact, the ending is a compacted, pantomime-like
repetition of a much longer scene early in the film, when these two characters
meet for the first time over a quiet dinner.
Both are pretending to be someone they are not – a
Baron and a Countess. In the course of the scene, each exposes the other’s true
identity. And then we are treated to a string of revelations concerning the
small but decisive acts of theft they have already committed: he’s swiped her
pin, she’s taken his watch (whose time she has also regulated) … and he, in further,
complete defiance of all screen realism, has pinched the garter she was
wearing! It’s this last coup that prompts Lily to fly into his arms and hurl
the inaugural “Gaston!”
Even the music (composed by W. Franke Harling) gets in
on the joke here. The score that accompanies the ending is associated with a
radio broadcast we see within the film’s first 20 minutes; in it, backstory
about Gaston’s misadventures is mingled with a sung advertisement for
Mariette’s perfume business, “Colet and Company”. In the penultimate scene,
Lily acidly farewells “Madame Colet … and company”; and this Madame’s final
line, referring to the pearls, is “with the compliments of Colet … and
company”.
The so-called “Lubitsch touch” is renowned, endlessly
evoked by critics (from Herman Weinberg to Serge Daney), filmmakers (from Billy
Wilder to Wes Anderson), and even critics-turned-filmmakers (from Peter
Bogdanovich to Edgardo Cozarinksy) alike. In truth, this touch is not one,
single effect – if it were, his admirers might be able to emulate it better. It
is, rather, an integration of structures and moves at every level of cinematic
craft: the plotting in the script, the staging of action, and the direction of
actors – as well as the careful editing patterns and placement of musical cues
that Lubitsch foresaw down to the last detail.
Yet Lubitsch is never simply inside or outside the Hollywood
codes; while he up-ends every appearance (as much through sound counterpoint as
through framing and editing games) – from that very first, startling spectacle
of the garbage-man breaking into a Venetian aria – he also lets us enjoy the
sly virtuosity, the infinite caginess, and finally even the mutual tenderness
between his principal thieves.
Through the form of its intricate, nested repetitions,
and in the content of its class-conscious satire, Trouble in Paradise endures.
MORE Lubitsch: The Shop Around the Corner, Angel, The Man I Killed, To Be or Not to Be
MORE Lubitsch (book review): How Did Lubitsch Do It? by Joseph McBride © Adrian Martin August 2011 / February 2017 |
