alr

The Marriage Circle

Live Musical Accompaniment by Martin Marks
Screening on Film
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
With Marie Prevost, Monte Blue, Adolphe Menjou.
US, 1924, 35mm, black & white, silent, 92 min.
Print source: HFA

One of Lubitsch’s classic sex comedies, The Marriage Circle is set in Vienna in the early days of the last century, a bygone era that critic Herman G. Weinberg evocatively described as “a vanished world of roses, kisses and embraces, of whispers and sighs, of a woman’s shadowed arm encased in georgette beckoning across a moonlit garden.” The story revolves around Mizzi, the promiscuous wife of a professor, who sets her flirtatious sights on her best friend’s husband, a handsome physician. The ensuing romantic roundelay reveals a latent attraction of the doctor’s medical partner for his wife as well as the growing suspicion of the beleaguered spouses that something is not well with their marriages. The film is filled with the quaint details Weinberg describes as well as Lubitsch’s shrewd insights into human nature.

Part of film series

Read more

That Certain Feeling... The Touch of Ernst Lubitsch

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas

Read more

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy