TODAY IN BERLIN: THAT LUBITSCH TOUCH
Born on This Day in Berlin: Ernst Lubitsch
Another day, another page from our Berlin Calendar. Today we are all going to Hollywood:
On 29 January, 1892 Ernst Lubitsch, German film director who later made a career in Hollywood, was born in Berlin. His parents - both Aschkenazi Jews (father, Simon, came from Grodno in today’s Lithuania, while mother, Anna, had her roots in Brandenburg) - lived in Lothringer Str 82a at the time. A street you won’t find on the maps anymore but which still very much exists: in 1951 it was renamed Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße, only to become today’s Torstraße in 1994. The house, however, is gone.
Ernst was Anna’s and Simon’s youngest child, and as the Nesthäkchen (the youngest one) very much disliked by his quite much older siblings. Perhaps that is why he enjoyed comedy and developed such wicked sense of humour - if you cannot fight them, make them laugh.
When Ernst was five, in 1897, the family moved to a new address around the corner: to Schönhauser Allee 183 corner Lottumstraße. A memorial plaque installed on its facade in the presence of his daughter, Nicola, in 2007 commemorates the film-maker.
Like many early directors, Lubitsch first tried his hand at acting: you can see him in the 1913 silent movie “Die ideale Gattin” produced by one of Berlin’s first film studios, Deutsche Bioskop. Lubitsch features in it as Herr Krispin, a matchmaker of sorts. Luckily, the 10-minute-long production which for years had been considered lost, resurfaced again after it was found in the vast collection of nitrogen-film rolls kept in the fireproof bunkers of German Bundesarchiv.
The first with film Ernst Lubitsch behind the camera was his “Blindekuh” - it had its premiere on May 28, 1915 - followed by the hilarious “Als Ich Tot War” (As I Was Dead) in 1916 (you can watch it on the linked page).
After a month-stay in the USA in 1921, a year later Lubitsch - a freshly married man - moved to Hollywood and a new phase in his life - and in the history of cinematography - began. In the “Dream Factory” Lubitsch worked for most of the big Hollywood studios: Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount.
A while later another famous German film-maker, young Billy Wilder, who was a huge fan of Lubitsch’s, wrote several scripts for him. One of these was the 1939 cinema classic, Ninotchka - nominated for several Oscars. Also because it featured a laughing Greta Garbo.
Lubitsch gained increasing admiration of both the public and the critics (something that is not automatically granted). “His films 'were at once elegant and ribald, sophisticated and earthy, urbane and bemused, frivolous yet profound’. They were directed by a man who was amused by sex rather than culture to be amused by it as well.” So Michael Wilmington, one of the reviewers.
What he referred to was a particular style developed by Ernst Lubitsch, a style known as "The Lubitsch Touch", his “cinematic trademarks”. These were: a peculiar charm or “sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance” or “ . . . a blend of costumed Ruritania and Berliner sexuality toned down for American tastes” (quote from Kevin Starr).
His 1942 “To Be or Not to Be”, a comedy about a theatre troupe fooling the Nazis in occupied Warsaw, is - next to “Ninotchka” - probably his still best-remembered film. Also thanks to the fantastic 1983 remake by Mel Brooks and his wife, brilliant actress Anne Bancroft.
Back in Germany his work gathered mixed reviews - the negative ones coming mostly from the brown echelons (although if his diaries are anything to go by, Josef G, Nazi Propaganda Minister, was quite smitten). Hitler, however - like most people in power but without spine and/or sense of humour - hated him so much he allegedly wished to have a blow-up photo of Lubitsch mounted at Berlin’s train stations with a caption “An arechteypal Jew” on it. Now that Lubitsch cared.
But Lubitsch’s life was not just a bed of roses. In September 1939 he and his wife lived through sheer horror when their 10-month-old daughter, Nicola, who was travelling with her nanny back to the USA on board of a British ship, got caught in one of the most tragic marine incidents (involving passenger ships) of the Second World War: the sinking of SS Athenia.
The British passenger ship was torpedoed by a German submarine U-30 on the 3rd of September 1939. As a result, 112 people were killed - 16 of whom were children (among them was the ten-year-old Margaret Hayworth, one of the first Canadians to have died in that war). The U-Boot’s captain, Lemp, fled with his ship and crew after noticing he hit a passenger ship, abandoning the people on board of the sinking vessel to their own fate. Later, to over up for his crime, he even faked the ship-log page (supported by, perhaps unsurprisingly by the Nazi Ministry for Propaganda).
Miraculously, the baby Nicola was saved. Her nanny, Consuela Strohmeier, held the girl on her own back (other sources claim the toddler was sitting on her shoulders) while floating in the icy Atlantic - until they were saved.
Lubitsch went on to use his “Lubitsch Touch”, creating several more cinema classics. But even though he had been nominated several times for an Oscar, he had to wait for this recognition until March 1947, when he received an Honorary Academy Award.
Ernst Lubitsch died in Hollywood only several months later.