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	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

HOW DID LUBITSCH DO IT?

Joseph McBride

Orson Welles called Ernst Lubitsch (18921947) a giant whose talent and originality are stupefying. Jean Renoir said, He invented the modern Hollywood. Celebrated for his distinct style and credited with inventing the classic genre of the Hollywood romantic comedy and helping to create the musical, Lubitsch won the admiration of his fellow directors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, whose office featured a sign on the wall asking, How would Lubitsch do it? Despite the high esteem in which Lubitsch is held, as well as his unique status as a leading filmmaker in both Germany and the United States, today he seldom receives the critical attention accorded other major directors of his era.

How Did Lubitsch Do It? restores Lubitsch to his former stature in the world of cinema. Joseph McBride analyzes Lubitsch's films in rich detail in the first in-depth critical study to consider the full scope of his work and its evolution in both his native and adopted lands. McBride explains the Lubitsch Touch and shows how the director challenged American attitudes toward romance and sex. Expressed obliquely, through sly innuendo, Lubitsch's risqué, sophisticated, continental humor engaged the viewer's intelligence while circumventing the strictures of censorship in such masterworks as The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. McBride's analysis of these films brings to life Lubitsch's wit and inventiveness and offers revealing insights into his working methods.

Joseph McBride is a film historian and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.

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Book Published 2018-06-01 by Columbia University Press

Comments

Excellent, authoritative book . . . offers all the necessary points to be made about Lubitsch . . . [and] is chockful of cultivated insights and astute quotes.

Though some early Lubitsch films are lost, McBride rescues the director's neglected and underrated reputation, securing his legacy with critical insights and sound scholarship in one of the few full-length appreciations of the artist. Highly recommended.

Joseph McBride's study of Lubitsch matches the breadth and range of his incomparable work on Welles and Ford. Reading it, it is impossible not to want to see each of the director's greatest films again or for the first time readers will be driven straight to seek out not only the repertory standards but the silents, the musicals, and the German films. It is especially gratifying to see McBride apply his supple understanding of the intricacies of Lubitsch's sexual politics to the paradoxes lurking for contemporary viewers, exploring how the films play both against and into feminist readings. McBride doesn't shy from such explorations, but never leaps to premature conclusions. The book is an act of devotion matched to the heart of its subject. (Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn)

Prolific film historian and biographer McBride delivers his best book yet with this study of Ernst Lubitsch ... McBride has created a nuanced, thorough look at an important artist and his art. (starred review)