a vision of paradise with a touch so light ...

    Trouble in Paradise; Paramount Pictures, 1932. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch; screenplay by Samson Raphaelson; adaptation by Grover Jones; based on A Becsületes Megtaláló (The Honest Finder), 1931 play, by Aladár László; produced by Ernst Lubitsch; cinematography by Victor Milner. Performers: Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Greig.
    Summary: a gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket join forces to con a beautiful perfume company heiress. Romantic entanglements and jealousies confuse the scheme. 

     Almost incredibly, we're creeping up (five years or so and counting) on the one hundredth anniversary of Ernst Lubitsch's polished jewel of a drawing room comedy/melodrama, Trouble in Paradise. The 'incredibly' part of my introductory sentence refers not to how old the film is, but how modern it is. Even the technology shows little signs of creakiness, delivered as it is with absolute assurance by the great Lubitsch, truly remarkable given the studios were still grappling with the newfangled addition of sound in movies, among other technical challenges. Remember, the film industry had only begun to go full blast for sound movies around 1929. All this is, as the man might say, fine and good, but what is it that's 'modern' about TIP? Actually timeless is just as good a descriptor, and it all lies in the film's attitudes and sensibilities, and, more important, the execution of such qualities, what they called back in the day the famed "Lubitsch Touch," often discussed and sometimes imitated but never equaled. 
     TIP is all the more timely considering the state of the film industry today, in which we're bombarded with the (mostly) bloated, homogenized, mind numbing dreck that Hollywood and Hollywood-like sources routinely churn out. TIP thus sparkles all the more as the transcendent masterpiece it is. Would that we could have such intelligence and (Old World) sophistication in movies these days. Big sigh ... As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of Trouble in Paradise, and it's difficult for me to sing its praises enough. Ergo, a recent re-watch of the Criterion DVD* has inspired me to opine a few superlatives, even if there's already a ton of postings and reviews of the film.

   Moonlight and champagne ...

    The basic question, for me anyway, is: why can’t they make movies like this anymore? Why not indeed? One reason is they don’t have Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins and especially Kay Francis, and another is that there aren’t many Ernst Lubitsch’s around these days. In any case the story of Trouble in Paradise is basically that of a love triangle: a suave thief (Marshall) and his live-in partner in crime (Hopkins) conspire to fleece a rich perfume heiress (Kay Francis) but things become complicated when said thief falls in love with the mark.

    Eminently up to the task of ingratiating himself with the heiress, Herbert Marshall is suspiciously well informed about ladies’ perfumes, lipstick, rouge & clothes. Haute cuisine too. But he’s so not gay, quite the contrary. Marshall here is at the zenith of his romantic leading man powers,** oozing a silken charm that allows him to talk his way into and out of just about anything; and though Miriam Hopkins is edgy and loud – what you see is what you get – she’s still appealing in her way.

    The film’s central, and most complex character, however, is the gleamingly polished but very human Kay Francis, and it’s been asked, why would Herbert Marshall not choose the shimmering, simmering, goddess-like Francis (and all her money) over the proletarian, if attractive, Hopkins? Well, thieves have to stick together, I guess. It’s as good an answer as any.   

    But what is it that makes Trouble in Paradise such a timeless classic? *** There’s the essential amorality of all the characters and the very timely message: the rich are simple-minded, self indulgent fools, and this includes, to some extent, the more sympathetic Madame Colet (Francis), and if thieves or con artists get the better of them, we don’t really object, we sort of like it actually. This brings to mind the rather hokey scene – a rare misstep in the film’s otherwise pitch perfect tone – where the Trotskyite radical scolds Kay Francis for her extravagant lifestyle in such tough times (it is the Depression, after all). He has a point, but it’s hard to sympathize with him because he’s such a lout himself. It all serves to remind us that nothing is black and white in a Lubitsch film; he gives then takes away and we’re never quite sure where the story’s moral center of gravity lies.

    Moreover, we identify with the thieves’ excitement and intrigue — the seduction and titillation of larceny, if you will. It’s only right then that Marshall’s a thief so cool he can steal a woman’s underwear while she’s wearing it. Which rather segues nicely to the romantic element, never out of style, presented here with such panache and lightness, and yes, a hint of sentiment and real emotion too. There’s also our expectations and wishes : a good part of the appeal of Trouble in Paradise is the will they/won’t they; which will he choose; will they get away with it suspense and uncertainty which isn’t resolved until the final scene, and even then we’re not so sure.

    Indeed, though the emotional, financial and even legal stakes for the main characters are high, it’s all treated with such a deft hand that we simply sit back and enjoy the thrill of the ride and don’t bother ourselves with trifles like consequences. Trouble in Paradise then is ultimately about the process and the journey, the quest, if you like, not the destination. In short, excitement, adventure, love, crime, intrigue and, most of all, living well for its own sake.

   * I refer to the 2002 Criterion DVD, which is pretty darn good technically, but I just found out that there's a very recent (April 2026) 4K UHD & Blu-Ray Criterion re-issue, the quality of which has gotten rave reviews.
   ** Alas, Marshall's romantic leading man status would be all too fleeting: within a few years he drifted into character roles which he played the remainder of his career.  
    *** There are other delights to savor: the incomparable Deco sets, Travis Banton’s otherworldly gowns for Miss Francis, and especially the knowing repartee which is the essence of the film’s all-time classic status. Then there’s the spot-on supporting cast: the imperious C. Aubrey Smith as Giron, Madame Colet’s unscrupulous business advisor; deadpan Robert Greig as Jacques the Butler; and, most memorable of all, Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles as the two asexual, hopelessly doomed-to-failure suitors to Madame Colet.

a gem of a movie: Jewel Robbery (1932)

  Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 4. Burbank, CA, distributed by Warner Home Video [2012]. 4 videodiscs (267 min.): sound, black and white. Contents: Jewel Robbery; Lawyer Man; They Call It Sin; Man Wanted.

   Jewel Robbery was originally released as a motion picture in 1932 by Warner Bros. Pictures & the Vitaphone Corp. Directed by William Dieterle; screenplay by Erwin Gelsey, based on a story by Ladislaus Fodor. Performers: Kay Francis, William Powell, Alan Mowbray, Hardie Albright, André Luguet, Sheila Terry. Summary: Baroness Teri von Horhenfels lives in Vienna, Austria, with a husband who bores her. When a jewel thief victimizes her, she is intrigued by him.

prosperity is just around the corner

   There are no weak links in Warner's DVD set Forbidden Hollywood v4, but the real jewel is … Jewel Robbery, an absolute creampuff of a movie that sparkles with a sprightly plot and knowing repartee delivered at a snappy pace. The cast is boffo: Kay Francis shines in a quintessentially Kay Francis role: a high society woman who is alternately bored and oversexed. Thus she's ripe for a romance with dashing thief William Powell (oops! he prefers to be called Robber).
 
  Ironically it was this kind of effortless performance that garnered Miss Francis the reputation as a so-so actress because everything seemed so easy for her. Whatever the case, Jewel Robbery is ultimately William Powell's movie as he breezes through his role as the titular character. As always he and Francis have marvelous onscreen chemistry. Kudos also to the rest of the spot on cast: Henry Kolker as Teri’s plodding husband, who nonetheless gets some of the best lines; the ever exuberant Helen Vinson (in her first film), who’s so good she almost steals the movie from the divine Miss Francis; and Lee Kohlmar as the nervously obsequious jeweler Mr. Holländer and Clarence Wilson as the clueless police chief, both of whom fall victim to those 'drugged cigarettes.'

 
   With its echt-Continental pedigree, Jewel Robbery could almost be seen as a warm-up for the even better (though not by much) Trouble in Paradise that appeared later that year [1], with Kay Francis more or less reprising the baroness role (this time as a perfume heiress) and the urbane Herbert Marshall stepping in as the suave thief. Indeed Jewel Robbery has a very Lubitsch-like Euro feel to it as director William Dieterle sustains a mostly breakneck pacing that that even the great Lubitsch would envy. The brittle dialogue is delivered so fast that most of the innuendos fly under the radar and it takes several viewings to appreciate the sly implications and mildly subversive editorial comments.

    But getting back to those funny cigarettes: among other things what makes Robbery a pre-Code cult classic is that it's quite possibly the earliest overt reference to marijuana in the movies, those thin cigarettes William Powell keeps passing out. And to make matters all the cheekier it’s done so in a comic context.

“untouched in the suburbs . . . that doesn’t intrigue me at all”

   The film’s mildly leftist subtext delivers its message subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – in sometimes contradictory ways, in any case always reflecting a certain pre-Code skepticism and street smarts. The Robber’s disdain for bankers inspires the rejoinder that he must be a communist. Quite the contrary, he explains. He much prefers predatory capitalism to egalitarian communism: even in the Depression-laden 1930s, in which the masses in the capitalist countries are mostly poor and downtrodden, there’s still plenty of well-to-do targets for a self-respecting criminal to prey upon.

   As Powell explains, what could he steal in a communist world? Grain elevators? Tractors? And much like the two confidence artists in Trouble in Paradise, Powell’s gentleman thief only fleeces the eminently deserving: wealthy scions, idle heiresses, bankers, government bureaucrats, in other words, the corrupt rich.

   The Francis and Powell characters are appealing, the most sympathetic in the entire film actually. Consequently we root for their, however improbable, romantic success. Indeed, they’re about the only characters in the story worth rooting for. Paradoxically, despite their good looks, fine clothes and breezy charm, neither is very admirable. Teri, by her own admission, is superficial, self-centered, materialistic and uninteresting, and the robber, for all his surface gloss, is still a methodical, calculating criminal. Yet like them we do. We must, it would seem. After all they look pretty good next to the rich trash, doofus policemen, and pompous government apparatchiks they’re surrounded by. The possible exception is the flighty, harmless Marianne (Helen Vinson), more or less a clone of Teri in her trophy wife status and thrill-seeking  vacuity.

   Note: this was Francis’s and Powell’s penultimate movie (they did six altogether). The arguably superior – and very different in tone – One Way Passage that followed later that year was their final pairing. And what a year 1932 was for Kay Francis!

    [1] As good as it is, Jewel Robbery still has a hint of the ramshackle and rough-around-the-edges quality that accounts for a good deal of its charm and the appeal of pre-Code movies today. By contrast Trouble in Paradise luxuriates in a generous swath of Lubitschian polish typical of Paramount’s best efforts.