The Lubitsch Touch

It's the perfect season to stay up late to watch old movies on TV. Last night I caught The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan (loosely remade a few years ago as You've Got Mail). It's a fantastic movie, one of many directed by the German emigre Ernst Lubitsch which reflected his unparalleled ability to mix humanistic comedy with engaging romance. One of the seemingly simple features of this kind of movie is that directors like Lubitsch allowed their actors to play off one another, something that seems very rare in the quick-cutting, short-attention-span-assuming work of contemporary filmmakers (I know there are exceptions-- to be fair Lubitsch was something of an exception in his own time-- but they generally are not found in mainstream Hollywood product, a category that included Lubitsch films sixty years ago). Watching Stewart's reactions as Sullivan unknowingly breaks his heart is moving in a way that I can't remember experiencing in any recent movie. But the real highlight of the film for me was watching the great character actor Frank Morgan in the role of the cuckolded shop owner, Mr. Matuschek. Morgan builds a persona that is by turns comic and tragic, but in all cases conveying a fully believable decency and grace in his relations with the other characters of the film. Near the end of the film, when he invites the new delivery boy Rudy to join him in dinner, the scene unfolds in a manner that is entirely consistent with the character's development through the story, representing both the positive elements that comprise his basic character and the lessons learned from his terrible mistakes. It's a thing of beauty that has virtually nothing to do with the plot, but everything to do with embodying the spirit that makes the movie so special. It's a great example of what has come to be known as the "Lubitsch touch."