Trivia

At one point Lancelot takes a heart out of the leg of his pants. This is an allusion to the German expression 'Das Herz ist mir in die Hose gerutscht' (my heart slid into my pants) which is equivalent to 'to have one's heart in one's boots'.

The film was the director Ernst Lubitsch's 11th collaboration with Ossi Oswalda, described by Lubitsch scholar Joseph McBride as an actress who "radiates warmth, unrestrained enthusiasm, and innocent erotic vivacity." Lubitsch embraces that playful energy and girlish enthusiasm as she uses her disguise to mess with the men around her, invariably with an exuberant laugh.

Looking back on his career late in his too-short life, Ernst Lubitsch called The Doll (1919) (The Doll) "one of the three most outstanding comedies I made as a director in Germany." (The other two were The Oyster Princess (1919) and Kohlhiesel's Daughters (1920)). "It was pure fantasy; most of the sets were made of cardboard, some out of paper," he wrote in 1947. "Even to this day I still consider it one of the most imaginative pictures I ever made."

The Doll (1919) (The Doll) embraces artificiality and self-awareness from the opening credits. Ernst Lubitsch himself opens the film, pulling pieces from a small chest to build a diorama in front of us, complete with a pair of dolls that he places inside a toy cottage. It is one of the greatest metaphors for movie-making ever put on the screen. The film cuts to the now full-size set to observe his actor-dolls coming to life in the fantasy setting. The theme continues with cardboard clouds parting to reveal a smiling sun, pots and pans cartoonishly drawn on the walls of a kitchen, and a carriage drawn by actors in horse costumes. This is indeed a toybox of a movie.

The Doll (1919) chase sequence bears some resemblance to the Buster Keaton silent comedy six years later Seven Chances (1925). "Jimmy Shannon" (Buster Keaton) is in love with Mary. He discovers he is set to inherit seven million dollars if he marries by 7 p.m. that night. A notice is published in the newspaper. Thereafter, much of the film is taken over by an epic pursuit where the bridegroom Jimmy is chased by an ever-growing horde of prospective brides.