Some critics seem to find it impossible to consider that a comedy could have a sharp political edge. Lubitsch follows in the footsteps of Chaplin and Borzage; the enemies are clear and we must not miss. Comedy is deadly serious, it is a leap into the unknown, where it is not clear what will draw a laugh and what will fail; thus it is an act of pure faith. Lubitsch had been doing sharp comedies about sex and class for over 20 years, often in made-up European countries and in anonymous boudoirs, but with this film he re-orients his concerns to address the very real tragedy happening in Europe. It is not as if Lubitsch has never before been serious (see the underrated Broken Lullaby), but the achievement of this film is how adroitly and convincingly it channels the energies to be found in something like Ninotchka (another political comedy, of course), where romance and play are paramount, and seemingly lets them loose into the real world of Nazi-occupied Poland. Sex and freedom do not lose their importance when faced with the Gestapo; rather, their importance is intensified. Lubitsch’s vain actors join the cause and use the tools at their disposal: grace, wit and charm. The politics cannot be understood without the comedy – they are one in the same. But violence is not far behind; men are killed, corpses must be disposed of, and the threat of death is everywhere. And yet everything is repurposed into the game. We are never allowed to lose the thread of the comedy, even when Felix Bressart’s Greenberg recites lines from The Merchant of Venice and the true cost of occupation and war is felt (Lubitsch’s sorrow seems to lie in the the death of his character’s dreams). Actors become spies and then become heroes. What’s at stake? Always survival, but irreverence is not far behind – toward marriage, toward love, toward sex, toward everything. Lubitsch’s characters do not want seriousness forced upon them, never, if they must be serious then it will be under their terms, and there is nothing more serious than play.
I rewatched Inglourious Basterds recently, a kind-of update to this idea (the Bastards sneaking into the movie theater is not far behind from the games played in the Lubitsch film), but far different in tone. In Tarantino’s film, violence is the main concern (who commits violence, and how that violence is returned); everything flows from this logic. His scenario builds to violence, it anticipates violence, and then it delivers violence. In between these moments, there are passages with charm and wit, sure, but his poetry seems subsumed to this concern – it is, on the whole, a prosaic film, where only a few characters escape his bloodlust to assert their status as poetic beings (Shosanna putting on her war make-up to Bowie’s “Cat People” rivals the images of Pam Grier in the opening credits of Jackie Brown). Tarantino’s idea of historical revenge becomes an ideological dead-end when it is filled out with his movie-mad creations (a dashing film critic, the auterist cinemateque showing Clouzot, nitrate film ending the Third Reich!); it becomes a director playing with his toys rather than a film dealing with human beings. I do not mean to dump on the Tarantino film (it’s actually a film I still like!), but the depth of feeling and poetry and humanity found in Lubitsch’s film made the comparison inevitable. At film’s end, Brad Pitt and the guy from The Office face the camera and deliver more violence; this is all that they can do. For Lubitsch, however, once freedom is earned, what is else there to do but play on – a ham will always be a ham, and his wife, well, there will always be young men around to distract her in her dressing room. What else is life about?
