Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Trouble in Paradise: 1932, dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Seen on DVD (April 7).
It was such a happy surprise, such a nice little gift, to watch Trouble in Paradise and realize that it was yet another movie that I would enjoy and love and remember fondly. You never know, with these early films, whether it will be a static dull dud (Morning Glory, for which Katharine Hepburn won an Oscar), or something that hasn’t dated and faded over the years.
The problem with Trouble in Paradise is that I cannot really talk about it without talking about Thirties movies in general, and how much I love them, and the qualities of these films and how this relates to Trouble in Paradise. If you don’t want to read about the evolution of the romantic comedy film … your loss, not mine. But you have been warned.

As you might have gathered, I really love certain genres of American movies from the 1930s. Well, hell, I love most Thirties movies, period. The clothes are cool, the dialogue is often witty, and there’s a wonderful quality of escapism. American was in the teeth of the Depression and people wanted to get away from it for a couple of hours, so they went to movies to watch beautifully dressed, witty, sophisticated people who nonetheless had all kinds of problems very much like the problems encountered by the audience in their lives.
I particularly like Thirties comedies … most especially screwball comedies, but I’ve seen a lot of romantic comedies, and read a lot about the subgenre called the comedy of remarriage, and by now I’m boring anyone brave enough to have read this review in the first place.
At their best, Thirties romantic comedies are luminous, they have an otherworldly quality. These movies are in their own artificial reality with its own set of rules and stock characters and locations, and the more of these movies you watch, the more you understand this particular reality. (Or lack thereof, as the case may be.)
Trouble in Paradise is considered by many to be one of the first romantic comedy films. (I won’t go into the argument now.) It is directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who could get away with movies about sex even after the Production Code (aka the Hays Code) was in full swing. Lubitsch may be best known for Ninotchka or To Be or Not To Be … or you might know about his The Shop Around the Corner, which was remade recently as You’ve Got Mail.
Lubitsch was considered the master of sophisticated romantic comedy in the late Thirties and early Forties, although he is not very well known today. He was a major influence on many directors, including (you knew this was coming, didn’t you) Billy Wilder.
I haven’t seen a lot of Lubitsch films because they’re hard enough to find in VHS format, and most are not available yet on DVD. (According to Masters of Cinema, a very good and useful site about obscure classics on DVD, Warner Home Video will release some of these movies on DVD in 2005. Meanwhile, Trouble in Paradise is available on DVD thanks to the Criterion Collection, and it is well worth watching if you have any interest in romantic comedy, or Lubitsch, or both.
Trouble in Paradise is a luminous, beautiful, enjoyable example of the kind of Thirties movie I love. It isn’t a perfect movie by any means. You can see the early romantic comedy film is still trying to find its way. Scene changes are often a little awkward, dialogue is sometimes slow and stilted, and the language of film as we know it is not as refined as it is in later films. (I can’t explain it better than that without watching the movie again. Which I would love to do, but I had to give the DVD back.)
I mean, I started getting excited during the opening credits. Edward Everett Horton! I had no idea he would be in this movie! And Charlie Ruggles! And C. Aubrey Smith! (I just used up my exclamation point quota for at least a week.) If you know something about Thirties films you might recognize the names, or even the faces as the movie progressed … these are stock character actors who are delightful to watch. I particularly like Horton, who is in one of my favorite films, Holiday. (In fact he is also in the earlier obscure filming of Holiday that I have never seen, not that this has anything to do with anything with this film.)
Trouble in Paradise is delightful if you can immerse yourself in Lubitsch’s universe. My boyfriend walked in the room after the movie started, tried to watch a few minutes of the movie, and walked out again. I don’t think this is the movie to start with, if you want to watch this kind of movie … I would recommend Bringing Up Baby instead. (Which I can’t watch with him because it’s not on DVD but that’s another rant altogether.) Or maybe It Happened One Night or Twentieth Century, which are both good early romantic comedies.
One of the wonderful things about Trouble in Paradise is that it was released before the Production Code was created. I love watching pre-Code movies to see what the filmmakers could get away with. Of course many of these movies were censored locally (like in Cinema Paradiso if you’ve seen that) and we needed the Production Code to preserve the films and so on, but it’s so refreshing to watch these early movies and find bits of naughtiness.
The lead characters in Trouble in Paradise are criminals, thieves. They are delightful thieves, and we like them very much. The film establishes that this is their profession like any other one, and does not censure. The Production Code would have mandated that these characters receive heavy punishments at the end of the movie to show a good moral conclusion, but this does not happen. At the end of the film, they are still thieves, they are still happy.
Not only that, but this couple lives together, obviously sleeps together, and they’re not married either. Doors close discreetly on the camera but we know what’s going on behind those doors. People in this movie are having sex. Isn’t that lovely?
Trouble in Paradise is sophisticated, naughty, amusing … and not moral.
Also, there is something pleasant right now about watching a movie in which characters have to deal with, well, the Depression. Characters are constantly saying, “Well, in these times” or “times are bad right now” (again, I don’t have a transcript) in reference to the poor economic situation. This doesn’t stop the heiress from buying an extravagant jewel-encrusted purse, but then the fate of that purse seems rather appropriate as a result. In these days, y’know.
Herbert Marshall is all right as Gaston, the thief who has to decide between his partner Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and heiress Mariette (Kay Francis). Marshall was what we had before Cary Grant came along and took all the good romantic leads. Many people have questioned why he was ever cast as a romantic lead, and while he’s no Grant, he does very well in this movie. It was a nice surprise to see Miriam Hopkins looking so brash and lively after seeing her in These Three. I haven’t seen a lot of Kay Francis movies, as they tend to be melodramas. (I would love to see Girls About Town but it’s not even on VHS.) I thought her character was a bit silly—it’s ridiculous these days to hear a woman say that all that bookkeeping is too much for her pretty little head—but it worked in the context of the movie. And of course Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles do their usual capable job as comic relief.
Trouble in Paradise is stylish and entertaining and even a bit suspenseful—which woman is Marshall’s character going to end up with? I could not have guessed. It’s an artificial world, to be sure, full of silliness and unrealistic dialogue and unbelievable plot twists, but who cares? Audiences flocked to movies like this to escape and it worked, beautifully. Trouble in Paradise is a delicate soap bubble of a movie that could pop and dissolve at any moment, but it’s stronger and more memorable that it would seem at first glance. It is an excellent movie of its type, and I love that type very very much.