User reviews

"The Doll" is a delightful feature--the best I've seen of director Ernst Lubitsch's German films. The deliberately artificial and often theatrical settings--flat backdrops, fake trees and people in horse costumes included--by Kurt Richter saliently add to the picture's enchantment and fairytale-like narrative. "The Doll" is similar in this approach to Maurice Tourneur's 1918 films "The Blue Bird" and "Prunella." Like "The Blue Bird," "The Doll" has a few moments that seem reminiscent of the feéries of early-cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, such as the Moon's facial expressions and the stop-motion animation to change the doll maker's hair. Highly-artificial theatricality was also adopted for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), although in a very different way. Lubitsch begins the film well by appearing in front of the camera to introduce and arrange the mise-en-scène in miniature--a scene that then fades to the actual set and beginning of the story proper.

In it, the baron's nephew doesn't want to marry a woman, so he purchases what he believes is a life-size doll to be his wife. Meanwhile, a real woman, the doll maker's daughter, is pretending to be that doll to hide that the doll maker's apprentice broke the doll that was based on her appearance. So, the nephew thinks he's fooling everyone, when he's the one being fooled. It's a simple narrative, briskly plotted, and very well enacted. The inherent sexism isn't lost on Lubitsch either, as a humorous advertisement offers the doll maker's product to widowers and misogynists alike. Additionally, there are a few light sex jokes throughout. Ossi Oswalda is wonderful, cute and funny, with her various expressions and movements, including the dancing, as she plays the character masquerading as a lifeless doll. Her performance significantly helps make this photoplay entertaining. The slapstick and subplot antics between the wacky-looking doll maker and his young apprentice are even amusing and appreciated.

Dancing and a comedy chase make their way into this and other Lubitsch films. The themes of mistaken identity or masquerading as acting and doubles also underlie the humor of several Lubitsch comedies, in Germany and America. His three earliest comedies that I've seen ("The Merry Jail," "I Don't Want to Be a Man" and "The Oyster Princess") all play with these ideas in different and self-reflexive ways, with characters pretending to be someone else. The girl isn't only doubled as a doll; her image is literally doubled photographically during a dream scene. Moreover, the theme of fakery extends further in "The Doll": the dolls are fake, a real woman fakes being one of them, which is supported by the fake appearance of much of the film's production design. The entire production coalesces to firmly establish the film's world as fantasy. The sets and designs of Lubitsch's German films seem to have always been impressive, but in some of them, it feels that they overwhelm their plays, or that the narratives and characters were never equal to the grand décors, but in "The Doll," it all fits together.

Because the Baron of Chanterelle wants to preserve his family line, he forces his timid nephew Lancelot to choose one of the village maidens to wed. Lancelot flees to a monastery to escape the forty eager maidens. When the gluttonous monks discover that the Baron is offering a large sum for the marriage, they suggest Lancelot marry a mechanical doll instead.

I absolutely love how this was put on as a mixture between a play and a film. Some of the sets (such as inside the castle) seem quite elaborate, while other things (the trees and horses) smack of a high school production. But not in a bad way -- there is a certain charm to how this story unfolded. Add to that the wild hair and outfit of the puppet master (a precursor to Willy Wonda) and you have a great looking film.

Something could be said about the interaction between people and robots, and at what point are robots so lifelike that the line between human and non-human is all too fuzzy. But this is a light-hearted film and I will not get too serious here.

"Die Puppe" aka "The Doll" ranks with "The Oyster Princess" as perhaps Lubitsch's most sublime film made during his German period. Both films are superior in many respects to the well-known but pallid historical drama, "Madame duBarry" aka "Passion" (also made in 1919). Lubitsch himself felt that way. In a letter he once submitted to his biographer Herman G. Weinberg, Lubitsch considered "Die Puppe" and "Oyster Princess" as his most outstanding comedies produced in Germany before he departed for Hollywood to make "Rosita".

An early, entrancing example of what Lubitsch would become years later, "Die Puppe" is a supremely funny and delightful silent burlesque, filled with the master's light, witty, and graceful touch. The setting is frothy and artificial and it anticipates Lubitsch's enchanting fairy tale musicals of the sound era.

"Die Puppe" is introduced by Lubitsch himself with an artificial cardboard. It is a fairy tale about of a young prince named Lancelot(Hermann Thimig) who flees from his uncle Baron von Chanterelle(Max Kronert) to avoid a marriage. He settles in a monastery. There, he meets several monks who persuade him to marry a human-like mechanical doll and give them his uncle's dowry. The doll-maker Hilarius (Victor Janson) agrees to Lancelot's interest in his newest doll, an exact replica of Hilarius' daughter Ossi (played by Ossi Oswalda herself). But there is a problem: The doll-maker's young apprentice (Gerhard Ritterband) accidentally breaks the arm of the doll and now it is up to Hilarius' daughter Ossi to impersonate the doll in order to cover it up. Lancelot takes the doll/Ossi to his uncle's castle, where some of Lubitsch's most inventive gags occur as Lancelot mistakes real Ossi for the doll. He actually falls in love with the doll/Ossi. And the wedding scenes alone are some of the funniest moments ever filmed.

If you are a fan of Lubitsch, "Die Puppe" is an essential viewing.

The opening shot of Ernst Lubitsch's The Doll announces wordlessly that it's going to be...different. A man, Lubitsch himself, comes out and sets up a house and yard with paper on a table, which we then zoom in on and two characters exit the house to start the story. What follows is an unrealistic tale of love and fantasy that delights and entertains while providing what seems to be the earliest form of the Lubitsch Touch. This isn't the tale of high society and wit that Lubitsch became famous for, but it's really close to it.

The Baron of Chanterelle (Max Kronert) is frustrated because he has only one heir, his nephew Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), and Lancelot has seemingly no interest in women or extending the family line. He dictates that Lancelot must marry, and he decrees it to the whole kingdom, sending all forty eligible maidens into a Benny Hill-esque chase for Lancelot around the storybook looking country as the Baron chases behind, taking spoonfuls of medicine from his assistant as he goes. It's amusing and delightful, and it ends with Lancelot finding refuge in the local abbey, led by the abbot (Jakob Tiedtke), where the friars all sit around, bemoan their near ruinous state as they eat large portions of pork and bread. Lancelot begs them to grant him a safe space from his uncle's grasp, and they let him in.

It's when the Baron puts an ad in the kingdom's newspaper begging Lancelot to come back with a promise of several hundred thousand kroner as a dowry that the abbot reads, giving him a great idea. He'll connect Lancelot with the renowned dollmaker Hilarius (Victor Janson), and Lancelot can bring a female doll with him to the Baron to trick him into thinking that Lancelot has married. He'll be able to take the dowry and give it to the abbey so they'll never run out of pork knuckles! Nothing about this is terribly deep, and it's sometimes a bit too thin (why does Lancelot agree to give all the money to the abbey? I dunno). However, the meat of the film is the titular doll.

Hilarius has created his newest doll and modeled it after his daughter Ossi (Ossi Oswalda, in a dual role). When Hilarius' apprentice (Gerhard Ritterband) accidentally breaks the arm of the doll, Ossi decides to protect him (why? Unclear) by pretending to be the doll just as Lancelot shows up to pick a doll for his ruse. The film becomes an outright farce with Ossi pretending to be the doll with Lancelot dragging her around as she maintains the ruse. Why she does it is unclear, but the comic effect is sustained surprisingly well through the series of events. She keeps her arms up and maintains a static smile while obviously getting a kick out of the whole thing (her most likely motivation: it simply entertains her). She keeps it up through the wedding ball where she has to balance her need to maintain the fiction for Lancelot while happily dropping it here and there when Lancelot isn't looking to grab some food or drink or just dance with the Baron. Lancelot's innocent inability to grasp the situation (married to the storybook method of the film's telling) is the source of a lot of the comedy in the story, and that Lubitsch leaned so heavily into the storybook visual motifs throughout shows that he knew there needed to be a level of artifice around the events to give it the kind of narrative space necessary to sell the events to the audience.

This farce of intentionally mistaken identities along with the high society, European setting is what makes it feel more in line with the later perception of Lubitsch and his work, but that outright storybook visual aesthetic and lack of wit in the dialogue (there's not none, but it's extremely limited by the silent film format, relegating the little wit it can display in dialogue to intertitles) makes it feel like a proto-form of what Lubitsch would later become known for.

The resolution of the plot threads lead the pair back to the abbey after the successful conning of the Baron (since Ossi is a real person and not a doll, was it really a conning?), and Ossi's identity gets fully revealed, leading to the two falling in love. Why? It's thin stuff, but it's amusing. However, the depth of character required isn't quite captured. And yet, this isn't Carmen, this is The Doll. It's a farce and a comedy, and there's enough work done to make the comedy work and the narrative flow, just not enough to make the heart sing by the end.

I really appreciate the deep weirdness of the film, offset by the farcical aspects. Whenever I see a female doll like this in a film, I automatically think of the dehumanizing look at the titular character in Fellini's Casanova. It's nice to see this detail played more lightly, though I imagine this was an influence on Fellini later.

This is something of a nice gem in Lubitsch's early career. It's light and frothy farce that could have benefited from a stronger approach to its characters to establish them and their motives. However, what drives the film is its light comic sensibilities which, when combined with the intentional storybook visual aesthetic, creates a delightful little trifle of a film that points to where Lubitsch was going to go later.

All cinema is artificial, and there is no getting away from this no matter how much of a realist you try to be. And while authenticity and naturalistic performances are a necessity for drama, there are some types of picture in which a deliberate flaunting of artificiality is not only acceptable, it is a positive benefit.

By this point in his career, German comedy director Ernst Lubitsch had developed a unique brand of slapstick, the hallmark of which was absurdity and exaggeration. In Lubitsch's world, almost anything can happen, and often does. The stories he dreamed up with his regular collaborator Hanns Kraly were always whimsical and fairy tale-ish, but the Doll is perhaps their most fantastical of all. In it we have a lifelike mechanical doll, and a flesh-and-blood woman pretending to be the doll. Rather than go overboard trying to make this look as convincing as possible, Lubitsch takes things the other way, and stages the whole thing in a phoney and theatrical land, complete with wooden sets, painted backdrops and pantomime horses. In such a setting, the premise of the picture becomes workable.

Aside from this, the comic stylings of the early Lubitsch farces were becoming increasingly refined. As usual there are lots of jokes based around ridiculous numbers of people doing the same thing in unison, or the expressions of characters in reaction. Here Lubitsch shows the confidence to have many of these gags play out in long, unbroken takes, with hilarious results, such as the long shot of Lancelot being chased round the town by a huge gang of women, followed by his elderly uncle, followed by a servant with the uncle's medication. Often the careful placement of actors means our attention is drawn to the right spot at the right time, as oppose to overdoing a gag with a jolting cut. An example of this is the uncle's servant's very funny reaction to Lancelot's suggestion that the uncle get married. Lubitsch has the servant to one side of the screen, where it seems natural for him to be, but closest to the camera so his face is clear and we instantly notice when his expression begins to change.

As the eponymous doll, we have here another triumphant performance from Ossi Oswalda. While individual actors were used almost like cogs in Lubitsch's machine, there is no denying that Oswalda was surely a great comedienne in her own right. Here she shows impeccable control and timing, as she is forced to instantaneously snap in and out of being herself and acting as the doll. She also has a lot of fun pulling faces in this one. Honourable mentions go to Hermann Thimig, who is clownish enough to make a lead man in this silly setting, and Gerhard Ritterband, who despite being a youngster manages to steal every scene he is in. It's a shame these two did not have more distinguished screen careers, but of course it's worth bearing in mind that many of these players were more successful on the stage.

Speaking of which, it's possible that some viewers might be put off by the theatrical artifice of this picture. There is a rather depressingly naïve school of thought among some cineastes that film is film and theatre is theatre, and for film to make itself like theatre is to somehow straitjacket itself. But as we have seen, Lubitsch's creation of a self-confessed unreal world has given him greater freedom in staging his bizarre humour. Another German director, Fritz Lang, used a similar approach in his films of the 20s and early 30s albeit for a very different effect, whereby he created macabre and stylised art deco cities in which all kinds of comic-book adventures could take place. And in the Doll, when we see characters sleepwalking over rooftops or being carried away by a bunch of helium balloons, it is reminds me more than anything of the world of cartoons, in which the only limitation is the skills and imagination of the animators. With pictures like this, Lubitsch was really setting his genius free.

Die Puppe / The Doll (1919) : Brief Review -

Fun, Humour, Imagination and Banter, 15 years before people recognised "Lubitsch Touch". It was 1930s decade when Ernst Lubitsch became popular director and that so called 'Lubitsch Touch' was discovered but i am not buying it. I have seen those so called great films of Lubitsch from 30s decade but only few of them were on a level what i call Great. His 'Shop Around The Corner' and 'To Be Or Not To Be' tops my list but now i think he was far better director before 20s and the reason is 'The Doll'. How clever this imagination was to bring this idea this on screen. Not just the idea but the overall humour and situations were so good. Forced into marriage by his uncle, a man decides to fool him by marrying a life-like mechanical doll instead who is actually a Real Girl. This misunderstanding turns into a chaotic laugh ride providing wholesome entertainment from human resources. Ossi Oswalda plays the doll which i can never forget. It wasn't sci-fi but it felt like sci-fi and then i have to believe it's real, so amusing. Her character was truly sensational for the time and i am sure many boys in that era must have fallen in love with her. If i was a boy then, i would have married her i mean i would have loved to Marry such a cute doll. And not to forget how funny she was. Most of the comedy films have male actors fetching all the limelight but here a female actor was seen leading the show. Ernst Lubitsch's sparking direction, imaginative humour and vision to bring humanly gags from inhuman behaviour is nothing short of amazement. I feel sorry for those people who have made a big deal out of 'Lubitsch Touch' when it is not completely Great thing in my opinion, rather they should have given more attention to this film. Overall, an excellent entertainer beyond time limits.

RATING - 7.5/10*

By - #samthebestest

'The Doll', directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is a charming fantasy, a splendidly original film inspired by one of the Tales of Hoffmann ... and a movie which also captures the mood of English holiday pantomimes and Hans Christian Andersen. As a bonus, this film features an extremely kinky performance (very funny and sexy at the same go) by the delightful actress Ossi Oswalda.

In the opening shot we see the great Lubitsch himself, setting up a doll's house against a stylised backdrop. A close-up of this model then dissolves into a full-sized version of the same stylised setting, from which emerge actors dressed as dolls. From this point onward, the entire film is staged on highly stylised sets ... much like 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari', except that these sets are bright and airy.

Old Baron Chanterelle has no family except for his gormless nephew Lancelot. To continue the line, the Baron offers his nephew a dowry of 300,000 francs to get married. But Lancelot is afraid of women. The local prior shows him an advertisement from the dollmaker Hilarius, who offers a special service 'for bachelors, widowers and misogynists': a life-size clockwork girl! Lancelot decides to marry the mechanical bride, collect the dowry, then stash the doll in the attic.

Hilarius, for some reason, has made his clockwork doll an exact duplicate of his pretty daughter Ossi (anticipating a similar plot device in the 1949 film 'The Perfect Woman'). The clockwork girl has a control panel on her back (like Julie Newmar in 'My Living Doll') and a crank to wind her up.

The real Ossi decides to do some winding up herself: playing a joke on Lancelot, she attaches the control panel and the handcrank to her own back and pretends to be the doll. Of course there are problems when the 'doll' sneezes or coughs, and eventually Ossi gets hungry and thirsty because nobody offers the doll any refreshments. (How does she handle toilet breaks?)

In a frilly outfit with a short skirt, Ossi is very pretty as both the mechanical girl and the real one. There is some surprisingly good double-exposure in a couple of camera set-ups when the real Ossi and the mechanical one are onscreen simultaneously. Brilliant camerawork throughout by the great Theodor Sparkuhl.

Remarkably, Lancelot goes from the wedding banquet to the bridal chamber without ever twigging that his clockwork bride is the genuine article. (We don't see the wedding itself; perhaps Lubitsch feared that audiences would be offended by the idea of a man exchanging wedding vows with an inhuman object ... and in fact, an insert shot of a wedding certificate establishes that the wedding was a civil ceremony, not a religious one.)

The great charm of this film is its mood of fairy-tale unreality. The coachman's horses are played by men in pantomime-horse costumes. A cat and a rooster are played by cut-out figures. The moon has a human face, looking rather too much like Oscar Levant! I enjoyed a bizarre scene in which an entire roomful of mechanical girls dance for Lancelot.

There's also a remarkable early example of pixilation (stop-action animation using actors rather than mannequins) in a gag sequence in which Hilarius's hair stands on end, then turns white.

The sequences of Ossi (the real one) dancing stiffly while pretending to be a clockwork girl remind me of the sequence in 'Metropolis' when the female robot takes her first awkward steps. (Could this film have influenced 'Metropolis'?) A comedy sequence in this film prefigures a similar sequence in Buster Keaton's 'Seven Chances', when forty women bent on matrimony pursue Lancelot through the streets.

'The Doll' is an absolute delight from beginning to end, a film that the entire family will enjoy. I regret only that the German intertitles were set in a Fraktur typeface which made them very difficult to read. I'll rate this delightful movie 10 out of 10.

People speak of the Lubitsch Touch first showing up in THE OYSTER PRINCESS, but that movie always struck me me as a a good romantic comedy, dimmed by changes in fashion, creaking a bit in age.

But this movie is the real thing: a silly story told with much flair and constant surprises. It begins with Lubitsch showing you a model of the set, like Penn and Teller showing you how they do the cup-and-ball trick, followed by a show that dazzles you: pantomime horses, venal monks and a little bit of E.T.A. Hoffman all fall under the thrall of Lubitsch and all of them, and the audience too, end up with smiles on their faces.

This movie is too good to more than hint at its wonders. If you have never seen a silent feature, see this one.

Such a charmer. It certainly feels like a Lubitsch film, as it pushes boundaries with sex but in a playful way, makes cheeky observations about human behavior, and has entertaining characters skating along in a light comedy. Pretty impressive, especially for 1919, and well worth 66 minutes.

Some of the bits I liked:

• Seeing Lubitsch himself as the film begins, setting up the doll house which the characters then inhabit.

• The performances from Ossi Oswalda (the daughter/doll) and Gerhard Ritterband (the young apprentice). Oswalda's facial expressions and body control as the doll are wonderful, and Ritterband imitations of his boss were amusing. I also chuckled when he kisses his boss's wife after having kissed the doll, "Just so no one feels neglected," and how he later says he's throwing himself out the window out of shame, only to slide out easily from the first story.

• The artistry in the set designs, which while not boldly Expressionistic, have quite a flair, making the film a treat visually. You also get a couple of clearly fake horses, little effects like a montage of close-ups of chattering mouths, a transparency during a dream sequence, and a man's hair turning white when he gets shocking news.

• The doll being advertised as follows: "Offered to bachelors, widowers, and misogynists! I have succeeded, with the help of a mechanism I built, in constructing a human-like doll who can walk, dance, and sing by pushing different buttons." And as an aside, the toymaker has designed it to look like his daughter, even though it's a short leap to think of it as a sex doll being peddled to lonely (and abusive?) men, how creepy is that?

• The priests chowing down food like pigs, not wanting to share, and then finagling their way into getting their hands on the boy's dowry. One of them later ogles the "doll's" legs while she's dancing.

• The family members arguing over possessions before a loved one has even passed away, breaking a vase in the process.

• How the guy who is afraid of girls goes from being chased all over town by 40 young women who all want to marry him to being in the showroom at the dollmaker's, confronted by (probably 40, the same 40) dolls who all hop over to him eagerly, nodding their heads.

• The various innuendo once the young man does take possession of what he thinks is a doll. The toymaker tells him "Don't forget to oil her every two weeks." His father asks him whether he wants any last advice before leaving for the first night of his marriage, to which he replies "No thanks, I have an instruction manual." Oh my goodness, if this isn't classic Ernst Lubitsch, I don't know what is.

This comedy from the hands of Ernst Lubitsch in 1919 is a joyride through a number of imaginative sets and situations. Even though its artificiality if ever apparent, the movie makes it work by playing with the costumes and sets, to create a whimsical world where everything can happen.

Like other Lubitsch films the plot of this is build upon similar themes such as facade and identity. Although not my favourite of Lubitsch's films it hold a place in the top five. This movie is assured to put a smile on your face the whole way through, driven by Lubitsch's at times expressive directing.

Have said more than once about appreciating highly silent film and totally understand their appeal and importance in film history. Not all of them are classics and some don't really hold up and serve more as curios, but there are many fabulous ones out there too. The best of the great Ernst Lubitsch's German period (am more familiar with his 30s output, 'Trouble in Paradise' and 'The Shop Around the Corner' being favourites) are up there with the classics and there are many interesting films from this period.

Of which 'The Doll' is one of the very best and most interesting films of his from this period. It is so wonderfully strange, hugely entertaining and has a real sense of wonder, more so than a lot of Lubitsch's German period films) and Lubitsch's unmistakable style was also starting to emerge here in 'The Doll'. The story is silly admittedly but that didn't matter to me, being so utterly transfixed by everything else going on that it was easy to forget. Have not always said that with other films, but it was dependent on how everything else was executed.

'The Doll' still looks remarkably great, to me one of the best looking films of the late-1910s. Like being in a real-life fairytale with plenty of magic, some of the visuals are suitably theatrical and elaborate but in a good way and never looking static or overblown. Also boasting one of the better prints for any recently seen silent film.

It's often very funny, at best hilarious, without being so over the top that it becomes too campy. Especially so once in the castle. 'The Doll' is also quite adorable without getting sugary and some of it is strange in an imaginative way. Never does it become childish or too scary, and it will appeal to children and adults alike. It never becomes over-serious, which adults will appreciate, and they are likely to appreciate it not getting over-silly. Children should find it easy to follow and be caught up in the enchantment, raising fond memories of the Christmas pantomimes. The story is silly but doesn't feel creaky, instead moving quite briskly.

Regarding the characters Ossi is especially cute and funny, and the actors clearly understand what the story's tone is and what their characters allow and play them perfectly. Paticularly Ossi Oswalda and Max Kronert. Lubitsch's direction is witty and sophisticated, which was what his distinctive style consisted of. Hence what was meant when said that his style was starting to emerge.

Concluding, wonderful and a Lubitsch and silent film must. 10/10

Old wealthy baron von Chanterelle, feeling himself near to death, doesn't want the name of the family to be cancelled from history, and publicly invites all the maidens in the country to apply for marrying his only heritor, his nephew Lancelot. The latter, however, doesn't want to have anything to do with a real girl: he is not misogenous, though, just kinda shy. So he runs, chased by 40 girls, and takes shelter in a convent. The monks come to know that baron de Chanterelle offers the fugitive nephew a big sum of money if he gets married, and suggest the young Lancelot to fake-merry a puppett made by the famous doll-maker Hilarius, if he agrees to give all the money to the friars, who can in that way continue their quite unchristian way of life.

Lancelot agrees, but in Hilarius' shop something goes wrong, and the master puppetteer's daughter, Ossi (a real girl) is given to him instead of the doll. The girl is upset, but goes on playing the puppett; and Lancelot is quite satisfied, though he notices some strange behaviours in Ossi.

After it becomes clear that Ossi is a human being, both she and Lancelot appear to be happy with the discover.

One of the masterpieces of world's cinema.

I caught this on TCM, it is a completely captivating and delightful experience for all ages, so many layers in this story. Cannot recommend it enough for its period charm and generally kookiness.

However, the cast list here on IMDB is a mess due to faulty translations. "Dessen Frau" means "His Wife", and refers to Baron Chanterelle (chanterelles are a group of mushrooms, much eaten in Germany in late summer/autumn.) Similarly, "His Daughter" (Ossi, or The Doll) again refers to the Baron as her father. "The Briar" (!) should, I think, be The Friar; only in the film he is in fact the Abbot of the monastery, not merely a Brother. Wikipedia gets it all correct on its page about this film.

German director/writer Ernst Lubitsch December 1919 "The Doll," ranks as one of silent movies' funniest romantic fantasy comedies.

Labeled as an adult fairy tale, "The Doll," based on an 1896 opera, tells the tale of a young lad, the last of a Baron's lineage, escaping to a monastery since he's afraid of his very wealthy uncle's intention to marry him off. The monks, seeing a golden opportunity to get his dowry for marrying, arrange for him to wed a mechanical doll instead.

The lead-up to the wedding, filmed in a purposeful playhouse-designed setting, portrays the wacky events of a doll-maker's efforts to create a believable human doll, only to see his efforts thwarted by an accident by his young apprentice. So he conscripts his real life daughter, played by Ossi Oswalda, to pretend to be a doll. The wedding sequence has been cited as one of the funniest scenarios captured on cellulose.

'The doll' (or 'Die Puppe,' as the German would have it) is a bit of a peculiarity in a way that it seems only silent films frequently were. In subsequent decades of cinema it's been relatively rare to see features that so distinctly and playfully arrange their storytelling into a definite framework, with ancillary scenes either wholly separate from the narrative, or containing the narrative within it ("a tale within a tale"); even anthology films are a different beast. At that: lighthearted and fantastical as this title is, such fare has been successively relegated over time to the markets for kids' movies, and not so much general audiences. As such, it's a minor delight to take in a film that, 100 years later, would either be heavily rewritten to appeal to modern tastes, or advertised alongside outright children's programming. And with that - for anyone receptive to the jaunty silliness that such pictures portend, 'The doll' is very well made, and entertaining.

Happy-go-lucky as the whole affair is, we are treated to no less careful craft for that slant. Set design and decoration are exquisite in their detail, as are the fabulous work put into costume design, hair, and makeup. Every scene as written, and realized through director Ernst Lubitsch's expertise and sharp vision, is a small treasure of antiquated yet robust joviality - and roundly amusing at all times. And, bless them, the cast fully embrace the sprightly air about the production. From Victor Janson as eccentric dollmaker Hilarius, to Hermann Thimig as naive and put-upon protagonist Lancelot and Gerhard Ritterband as Hilarius' unnamed apprentice, everyone leans into the charm and whimsy, expressing their wild characters to life with vivid countenances and hearty body language. Special commendations to Ossi Oswalda in portraying the titular figure, though - even more than anyone else, which is itself saying a lot, she steals the spotlight with every scene she's in, taking on the especially fanciful role with aplomb. Hers is a part demanding rather precise physicality, and her according reputation is most certainly well deserved. Honestly, every aspect of 'The doll' is rendered with just as much attentive consideration - lively editing, thoughtful lighting and tinted treatment of footage, clever dialogue as presented in intertitles, and so on. Far more than I anticipated, this is some rather great fun.

It is perhaps worth observing that there's thematic content dancing on the edges of the movie that in the first place borders on indelicate, and moreover has found expression in very different ways in the years to follow. Noting Hilarius' advertisement ("Offered to bachelors, widowers, and misogynists!") - and yes, recognizing the innocent and carefree aura of the feature - one could nonetheless draw comparison to broad cultural and cinematic sensibilities (early 1900s style) that stripped women of agency, becoming little more than playthings at the mercy of men's discretion. This is counterbalanced with Ossi's independence and intelligence, and maybe too with the obligations, responsibilities, and otherwise expectations placed on men (as seen in Lancelot). Ponder, too, the collision of all these matters at the conclusion. There's quite a bit going on here, really - yet after all, perchance it's a tad beside the point, because above all else, 'The doll' wants not but to entertain. And so it does, most handily.

Viewers who have difficulty abiding silent films as a category will find nothing here to change their mind, and anyone who isn't open to the cheerful goofiness of the production can safely pass right on by. Yet for anyone who appreciates the era and the gaiety, this is worth more than the meager time, scarcely over 1 hour, that it takes to watch. 'The doll' is a pleasant, solidly enjoyable classic, and as far as I'm concerned, even all these decades later it deserves more recognition.