The Wildcat

Die Bergkatze brings us poignantly yet triumphantly to the end of an era, being the last of Ernst Lubitsch's German comedies. The director, best known for his "sophisticated" bedroom farces from the 1930s, carved out these little gems in his youth, and while rather different in tone and pace from his Hollywood work, they provide a unique and hilarious experience that should not go overlooked.

As if in anticipation of his forthcoming change in style, Die Bergkatze was Lubitsch's most riotous and stylised to date. Whereas he often based gags around a large group of people doing something (such as falling over or running away) simultaneously, he now takes the trick to the level of hyperbole, playing around with the largest horde of extras to be seen outside of an epic. Lubitsch has also turned his sense of the absurd up to eleven, and the picture is flavoured with dozens of wonderfully silly touches, such as the fort commander's exaggerated uniform having an extra pair of shoulder pads for the elbows.

Of course, Lubitsch was still to make a couple of straight dramas before receiving his invite to Hollywood. I'm sure he didn't know this was to be his comedic last hurrah in Berlin. So why is Die Bergkatze such a ridiculously extrovert production? The answer is almost certainly the director's confidence. Lubitsch was by now the most prestigious filmmaker in his home country, and his bizarre comic genius had gone down a treat with the public. Having more or less Carte Blanche from the studio, it seems that with Die Bergkatze he was seeing just how much he could get away with. He was also getting bigger budgets than ever before (prior to this he had helmed Anna Boleyn, Germany's most expensive production to date), it should come as no surprise to those familiar with the earlier comedies directed by Lubitsch and with sets designed by Kurt Richter (perhaps the most important collaborator during this part of Lubitsch's career), that if you unite these two with a large sum of money, you are bound to get something as gloriously demented as a fort that looks like a giant wedding cake covered in cannons.

Even in post-production, Lubitsch is playing around more than ever before, giving us those crazy frame shapes which look almost like a deliberate attempt to poke fun at the masking technique pioneered by DW Griffith five years earlier. Lubitsch was always a real aesthete when it came to shot composition, often delicately framing his actors with the luxurious curtains, window panes and assorted ornamentation that tended to make up the exquisite sets, both here and in Hollywood. In Die Bergkatze he has just literalised the process, treating the image as a work of art that could be either landscape or portrait, and once in a while mucking about and turning the screen into a squiggle or a pair of jaws.

And does Lubitsch get away with what he is doing? Yes, by the skin of his teeth! Why? Because Die Bergkatze is all of a piece. Considered individually, each of its exaggerations would be daft and distracting, but because Lubitsch has created a seamless world in which every idea is stretched to breaking point, it works. Every shot has some kind of oddity in it, not necessarily thrust in your face, but simply keeping the surreal tone going. No character is immune. In silent comedy in the US, women (at least the young women) tended to be treated with tender respect, and were often the only completely straight characters. But in Die Bergkatze we have a straggle-haired Pola Negri up to her neck in undignified antics alongside the boys, and doing a fine job of it, although I have to say I find myself missing the divine Ossi Oswalda, star of many earlier Lubitsch pictures.

Lubitsch's comedies after this were contrastingly sedate in pace and comparatively sensible in tone. This was not a regression, but neither was it an advance on these earlier chaotic creations. It was simply a case of a genius taking his talent in a different direction. And despite the neglect and underrating of pictures like Die Bergkatze, Sumurun, Die Puppe and Die Austernprinzessin, they are nevertheless inspired masterpieces, and every bit as worthy of our attention as The Marriage Circle, The Smiling Lieutenant and Trouble in Paradise.

One thing that strikes you as you watch the early Lubitsch comedies recently released on DVD in the US by Kino is-- how did Lubitsch come to have such an extravagant visual style, only to give it up a few years later? The later Lubitsch movies are certainly handsome, coming as they mostly do from Paramount and MGM, the chicest of the Hollywood studios. But for all the exotic places depicted in his films, it never occurs to him in later years to depict them with wild curlicues of plaster, fortresses that look like birthday cakes, staircases that descend a quarter-mile amid running water, as he does the European fantasy-land in The Wildcat.

The Wildcat is a sort of burlesque on a genre of military romances buried so deeply in the mists of memory that they still seem familiar even when it's hard to think of an actual example of what's being parodied (The Desert Song?). There's a fortress on the edge of mountainous wilds, and there's a handsome young officer who's been exiled there because of his love life. And then there's a tribe of wild mountain people including a tempestuous daughter, played by Pola Negri, with whom the officer will fall in love.

As with the mistaken identity plot in The Oyster Princess, you can imagine the 30s comedy this would be the setup for, but it's nothing like this-- which mainly consists of running around and clowning broadly. Only a few bits here and there-- a hilariously exaggerated depiction of the results of the officer's Casanova-like behavior, a delightful bit of comedy on the quarter-mile staircase that plays out with the purity and visual grace of Buster Keaton's single-take descent down six flights of stairs in The Cameraman-- are actually especially funny. (There's also a quite racy "Lubitsch Touch" moment involving his photo, a pair of pants, and where she happens to kiss.)

You wish in vain for Negri and her inamorato to sit down and actually share a scene, heat up the chemistry set, show us some real one-on-one Lubitsch Touch worthy of Billy Wilder's line that "Lubitsch could do more with a closed door than most directors could do with an open fly." But at least in Negri you have a recognizable comic human being, full of life and randiness-- and the ending, though still half-cartoon, has an emotional effect well beyond anything in The Oyster Princess just three years earlier.

It really is obvious at this point that Ernst Lubitsch needed dialogue to shine. I don't think he'd made a bad film yet (well, except for The Eyes of the Mummy which I've mostly pushed out of my brain), but he was consistently held back by the silent film medium's inherently different approach to building character than sound films or stage plays. His best films are comedies that take a broader approach to things, which The Wildcat tries to fit in, but, at the same time, this film embraces a level of character complexity that Lubitsch can't quite justify through the actual narrative. The film's focus, though, ends up being zany comic antics, which is where the film is easily at its best and most entertaining, but I feel like if Lubitsch wasn't going to figure out how to write more rounded characters in the silent film space, he should have simplified the storytelling, especially in the final act.

Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) is a ladies' man who is sent to the remote outpost run by a fat, mustachioed commander (Victor Janson). The commander has a wife (Marge Kohler) who lords over him and a daughter Lilli (Edith Meller) whom the commander decides should marry Alexis when he comes. On his way to the fortress, Alexis is waylaid by bandits led by the titular wildcat, Rischka (Pola Negri) who becomes completely enraptured by this gentleman soldier who manages to get away from his captors through a series of caves that he just kind of wanders through. It's a comedy, so it's slightly amusing, at least. These first two acts (like most of Lubitsch's early films, there are explicit acts) are the weakest of the five and they are really just about setting up the characters (borderline caricatures) and overall situation.

With news of the bandits, the commander sends Alexis and the men out to punish the attackers, but Rischka and the men under her are easily able to embarrass the soldiers with snowballs and superior placement, sending Alexis back defeated. However, the commander just assumes a victory and decides to marry Alexis to Lilli as a reward. The soldiers deciding to not correct their commander is honestly pretty funny. What follows is the central comic set piece of the film, the celebratory dance in honor of the betrothed. Reminiscent of the foxtrot epidemic in The Oyster Princess, it's a party that steadily grows out of control as people get into the music, including two guards outside the fortress's main gate. It's a raucous affair that gets intertwined with Rischka leading a small raiding party into the fortress, stealing some clothes, running into the drunk commander who salutes them, and, ultimately, with Alexis and Rischka chasing after each other through the large, unreal sets.

There's a moment where both Rischka and Alexis are spinning on a pole as they chase after each other that's completely unreal but highly entertaining and just part of the escalating comic and manic energy of the sequence. There's no effort to make it connect from an editing perspective to what comes before and after, with a quick cut to Rischka running in another room being the next shot, but it's kind of perfect with the silly quality that the film is embracing.

The actual dramatics of the film don't work quite as well. It's a situation where Alexis has to choose between Lilli and Rischka but also where Rischka has to choose between Alexis and the bandit Pepo (Hermann Thimig). This sort of two-sided question really needs strong character work, even in a silly movie like this one, to work. Why does Alexis ultimately choose Lilli? Is it his duty? It's kind of hard to figure out. The harder side is Rischka deciding to let Alexis go and return to Pepo, willingly just walking away from the man she was consumed with having for herself. Even in a silly film that embraces some early form of cartoon logic, if these dramatic turns come up they need to be supported, and I don't think they are.

Does that sink the film? Not at all. It just limits my appreciation. This isn't the top tier of Lubitsch's early comic work in the German film industry. It's second tier behind The Doll and The Oyster Princess, but it's certainly funnier than the Sally Meyer stuff.

Essentially, I really look forward to sound coming into Lubitsch's toolbox.

"The Wildcat" is an amusing romantic comedy made by Ernst Lubitsch, although more farcical than his later American work, but which was common of his German comedies. It wouldn't be long before the director emigrated to the US, and his increased stature in the business by this time is evidenced by the expensiveness of the sets and the more polished filmmaking in this film compared to his earlier comedies. The castle fortress set and its art deco décor look very nice, as does the outdoor scenery of the Bavarian mountains. The long staircase featured during an impromptu chase scene is especially impressive. One criticism of the film, however, could be that the settings sometimes dwarf the actions of the characters and narrative. Additionally, as Kristen Thompson ("Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood") could point out, the standard, flat V-pattern lighting of German film-making back then doesn't do well to distinguish, or spotlight, the characters from the settings. Reportedly, this was one of Lubitsch's least successful films, which probably encouraged him to discontinue this brand of comedy that he had heretofore found so fruitful.

There are very many masked framings of shots (circular, rectangular, ovals, irises, masks shaping the image inside of what look like fangs and snowballs, etc.). Another reviewer suggested Lubitsch was poking fun at D.W. Griffith and his cinematographer Billy Bitzer, who, indeed, employed iris shots and various masking effects frequently, but, otherwise, I don't see much function for their use in "The Wildcat". The masks for point-of-view looks through keyholes and binoculars, of course, have an obvious function, and the rest, I suppose, works to establish the spectator's point-of-view, but, overall, the framings here seem too distracting and gimmicky.

Nevertheless, the picture features plenty of pleasant nonsense amusement, with some funny moments scattered about, even if the humor is often broad. Scenes such as the crowd of women gushing over the departing Casanova-like Lieutenant, including goodbyes from his many children, or the stream of tears gag are especially comical. What little there is of a story and plot take a back seat. And, I think Pola Negri is more appealing here as an uninhibited mountain bandit than she is in some of her more melodramatic roles.

One of the better of Lubitsch's rough mountain comedies, with Pola Negri as the wild daughter of the bandit chief (all of the the bandits' possessions are festooned with skulls, to show how dangerous they are) who falls in love with the handsome lieutenant brought in to marry the daughter of the corpulent and ineffectual colonel of the fort. Like his other mountain comedies -- MEYER FROM BERLIN, ROMEO AND JULIET IN THE SNOW and KOHLHEISEL'S DAUGHTER -- it is a very broad comedy, with much falling down in the snow.

In those days, Lubitsch would shoot half a dozen films a year for UFA, and one would always be a mountain comedy shot on site in Bavaria, where he liked to take a working vacation every winter. They were not polished and witty pieces like The Oyster Princess and The Doll, but they were very popular.