Besides the obligatory titles, such as the witty 1939 comedy of bright lights and communism, Ninotchka, and the charming 1934 version of The Merry Widow, the retrospective is also showcasing a large number of Lubitsch rarities (including fragments from mostly lost films), ranging from his earliest work in Germany – among them several Pola Negri vehicles and the gender-bending 1918 comedy I Don’t Want to Be a Man, starring the German Mary Pickford, Ossi Oswalda – to some of his little-seen Hollywood films, such as the 1931 psychological drama Broken Lullaby / The Man I Killed, with Phillips Holmes and Nancy Carroll, and the 1930 Jeanette MacDonald-Jack Buchanan musical Monte Carlo.
Mary Pickford herself can be seen in Rosita a 1923 costume comedy that, despite claims to the contrary, was a popular release in its day. (Pickford disliked working with Lubitsch and kept a long-lasting grudge against him.)
Lubitsch reportedly also ran into problems with Nancy Carroll. In Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise, author Scott Eyman says that “part of the problem [with Lubitsch’s 1931 melodrama The Man I Killed / Broken Lullaby] may have been an inability to establish a rapport with Nancy Carroll; Lubitsch told Miriam Hopkins that ‘she doesn’t understand what I want her to do … she doesn’t want direction … I said to her … “If you would just put yourself in my arms” [hands]. And she said, “That I should do that with you, [a] German?”‘”
Note: Eyman doesn’t cite his source for the Ernst Lubitsch/Nancy Carroll quote. Miriam Hopkins died in 1972; Eyman’s Lubitsch bio was written in the early 1990s. He doesn’t mention Hopkins in the acknowledgments section, though he may have gotten the quote from some old Hopkins interview. Having said that, Nancy Carroll was known to be very difficult. That’s one of the reasons her Paramount stardom was so brief.
The retrospective is also screening a trailer of The Patriot, a 1928 silent drama starring Emil Jannings, Florence Vidor, and Lewis Stone. (The Patriot was considered completely lost until fairly recently. One reel or so was reportedly found in Portugal.)
The San Sebastian festival runs until Sept. 30.
List of Ernst Lubitsch films (including fragments and trailers) screened at San Sebastian. Unless otherwise noted, pre-1923 titles are German releases. From 1923 onward, Lubitsch worked in Hollywood.
Als ich tot war / Wo ist mein Schatz (1916)
Angel (1937)
Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Melvyn Douglas.Anna Boleyn (1920)
Cast: Emil Jannings, Hedwig Pauli, Hilde Müller, Ludwig Hartau, Henny Porten.Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, David Niven.Broken Lullaby / The Man I Killed (1932)
Cast: Nancy Carroll, Phillips Holmes.Carmen (1918)
Cast: Pola Negri.Cluny Brown (1946)
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Charles Boyer.Das Weib des Pharao (1922)
Cast: Emil Jannings.Das fidele Gefängnis / Ein fideles Gefängnis (1917)
Der Blusenkönig (1917)
Die Augen der Mumie Mâ (1918)
Die Austernprinzessin (1919)
Die Bergkatze (1921)
Cast: Pola Negri.Design for Living (1933)
Cast: Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March.Desire (1936)
Director: Frank Borzage.
Producer: Ernst Lubitsch.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich.The Doll / Die Puppe (1919)
Cast: Ossi Oswalda, Hermann Thimig, Victor Janson.Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (2006)
Director: Robert Fischer.Eternal Love (1929)
Cast: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn, Victor Varconi.Die Flamme (1923)
Cast: Pola Negri, Hilde Wörner, Alfred Abel, Hermann Thimig.Forbidden Paradise (1924)
Cast: Pola Negri, Rod La Rocque, Pauline Starke.Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Cast: Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, Signe Hasso, Laird Cregar.I Don’t Want to Be a Man / Ich möchte kein Mann sein (1918)
Cast: Ossi Oswalda.• If I Had a Million
Ernst Lubitsch (The Clerk), Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, H. Bruce Humberstone • USA • 1932• Kohlhiesels Töchter
Germany • 1920• Lady Windermere’s Fan
USA • 1925The Love Parade (1929)
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lillian Roth, Lupino Lane.• Madame Dubarry
Germany • 1919The Marriage Circle (1924)
Cast: Florence Vidor, Monte Blue, Adolphe Menjou, Creighton Hale, Marie Prevost.The Merry Widow (1934)
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Una Merkel.Meyer aus Berlin (1919)
Monte Carlo (1930)
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Buchanan.Ninotchka (1939)
Cast: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire.One Hour with You (1932)
Directors: Ernst Lubitsch & George Cukor.
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin, Charles Ruggles.Paramount on Parade (1930)
Directors: Ernst Lubitsch (segments: Origin of the Apache, A Park in Paris, The Rainbow Revels), Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H. Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, A. Edward Sutherland & Frank Tuttle.
Supervision: Elsie Janis.
Cast: Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Mary Brian, Clive Brook, Nancy Carroll, Ruth Chatterton, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Leon Errol, Stuart Erwin, Kay Francis, Richard “Skeets” Gallagher, Harry Green, Mitzi Green, James Hall, Phillips Holmes, Helen Kane, Dennis King, Abe Lyman, Fredric March, Nino Martini, Mitzi Mayfair, David Newell, Jack Oakie, Warner Oland, Zelma O’Neal, Eugene Pallette, William Powell, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Lillian Roth, Fay Wray.The Patriot (1928, trailer)
Cast: Emil Jannings, Florence Vidor, Lewis Stone.Romeo and Juliet in the Snow / Romeo und Julia im Schnee (1920)
Cast: Lotte Neumann, Julius Falkenstein, Gustav von Wangenheim.Rosita (1923)
Cast: Mary Pickford, George Walsh, Irene Rich.Shoe Palace Pinkus / Schuhpalast Pinkus (1916)
Cast: Guido Herzfeld, Else Kenter, Ernst Lubitsch, Hanns Kräly, Ossi Oswalda.The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut.The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert.So This Is Paris (1926)
Cast: Patsy Ruth Miller, Monte Blue, André Beranger, Lilyan Tashman.The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927)
Cast: Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, Jean Hersholt.Sumurun (1920)
Cast: Pola Negri, Paul Wegener, Ernst Lubitsch.That Uncertain Feeling (1941)
Cast: Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith.Three Women (1924)
Cast: Pauline Frederick, May McAvoy, Marie Prevost, Lew Cody.To Be or Not To Be (1942)
Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny.Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis.When Four Do the Same / Wenn vier dasselbe tun (1917)
Cast: Ossi Oswalda, Emil Jannings, Fritz Schulz.