Trouble in Paradise
Screening on Film
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
With Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall.
US, 1932, 35mm, black & white, 83 min.
With Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall.
US, 1932, 35mm, black & white, 83 min.
Lubitsch’s personal favorite among his works, Trouble in Paradise is the ultimate sophisticated adult comedy. Working from a Samson Raphaelson script peppered with spicy verbal badinage, the great emigré director adds his patented "Lubitsch Touch" with vibrant performances, precision-timed editing, and artful visual innuendo—in which the seen cleverly suggests that which censors of the time required to be unseen. In Venice two jewel thieves (Marshall and Hopkins) meet and fall in love, then join the household of a rich widow (Francis) in order to rob her. Amorous complications follow. Lubitsch manages to make this ensemble of sexually active, morally questionable characters undeniably endearing.