The marriage circle /
The tone is set from the opening scene as legendary director Ernst Lubitsch effortlessly sets up the duality of one perfectly happy marriage contrasted with another couple in a perpetual state of grimly endured misalliance. The Marriage Circle is full of scenes with a sense of unspoken formality, of...
| Other Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Video |
| Language: | No linguistic content |
| Language Notes: | Silent; intertitles in English and musical accompaniment. |
| Published: |
Los Angeles, CA :
Flicker Alley,
2000.
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| Series: | Academic Video Online
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to this streaming video (Alexander Street Press) |
| Summary: | The tone is set from the opening scene as legendary director Ernst Lubitsch effortlessly sets up the duality of one perfectly happy marriage contrasted with another couple in a perpetual state of grimly endured misalliance. The Marriage Circle is full of scenes with a sense of unspoken formality, of a mutually antagonistic marital standoff that has been going on for years. The move/countermove rhythm slightly anticipates the slow, tit-for-tat rhythms of Laurel and Hardy, but instead of escalating toward physical destruction, Lubitsch freezes the emotional temperature at a quiet, indicative irony. Unlike real people, these characters never lose their control, which is the essence of their absurdity, the soul of their wit. Before this film, the audience could only see Lubitsch characters move; with The Marriage Circle, we begin to see them think. Before, there were large sets and hundreds of extras. Now, Lubitsch strips everything down to the essentials: a few actors, a car, a garden, a dining room, a staircase. Lubitsch's German films, even the fine ones, tend to be brass bands - compelling, funny, but unavoidably loud. With The Marriage Circle, Lubitsch became the composer of the cinema's finest, most elegant chamber music. To see it in this glistening print derived from the original negative, with an appropriately lilting score by the Mont Alto Orchestra, is to fall in love with the movies - and Ernst Lubitsch - all over again. Excerpts from essay by Scott Eyman, author of Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise (Johns Hopkins Press) and Print the Legend: The Life and Time of John Ford (Simon and Schuster). |
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| Item Description: | Title from resource description page (viewed December 11, 2017). Based on the play "Nur ein Traum" by Lothar Schmidt. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (85 min.) |
| Playing Time: | 01:25:16 |