The Marriage Circle

A superb, honest, tender romantic comedy of manners, which features acting today's performers would be hard to match. You can laugh and feel for these characters. Ernst Lubitsch's smart direction keeps the movie always interesting, never dated.

"The Marriage Circle" should be required viewing for today's filmmakers. They'd learn how to reveal characters in emotionally complicated situations with minimum dialogue. And how to tell a story with minimum dialogue. And be funny.

This was Lubitsch's first film for Paramount following Rosita with Mary Pickford and sees him in transcendent form.

A highly sophisticated comedy set in Vienna (possibly to allow for the outrageous conduct of the characters)and rich in complex farce scenarios and intelligent narrative twists played by an excellent cast.

Marie Prevost is extraordinary as the relentless pursuer of the happily married Dr Franz Braum, happily married that is to her best friend played by Florence Vidor. Adolphe Menjou offers a characteristically fine performance as the betrayed husband seeking divorce from his wayward wife. His expressions are hysterical as he reveals his caustic feelings towards his spouse. This film explores issues of marriage, commitment, fidelity and temptation in the Lubitsch style. A very funny, touching comedy that displays Lubitsch's talent for understated sophisticated comedy. This stands alongside some of his best films such as The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not to be as an equal.

Have always found Ernst Lubitsch to be a very gifted director. When he was at his best, like with 'Trouble in Paradise', 'The Shop Around the Corner', 'Heaven Can Wait', 'To Be or Not to Be' and 'The Merry Widow', he was brilliant. Although so many directors at their worst fared far worse than him, Lubitsch was not immune from disappointment. Was not crazy about 'That Uncertain Feeling' for example and 'Eyes of the Mummy' was a dud.

'The Marriage Circle', his first film for Hollywood when diverting away from his German silents, however is thankfully closer to Lubitsch being on top form than being a disappointment or a slightly conflicted sort of film (he also had those early on). Instead it is one very well rounded, quite beautifully so even, circle. It was remade as 'One Hour With You' in 1932, which was just as good if not quite with the story being a little better done in 'The Marriage Circle'.

My only complaint of 'The Marriage Circle' is the ending, which felt abrupt and on the silly side. Which also coincidentally happened to the weak link of 'One Hour With You' too.

Otherwise it really sparkles as a film and one of Lubitsch's best early efforts and where his trademark style was starting to emerge. It did become even more refined from 'The Love Parade' onwards, but one can really see the famed wit and sophistication in his direction here. He also opens up the action enough so that it never becomes stage bound, while not trying to do too much avoiding the danger of the style swamping what's going on. The production values still look very elegant now, especially the clever photography that always feels part of the action and sumptuous decor.

Script is full of smart wit that is sharp and never less than very amusing. The story is also smart and only got a little silly at the end, the telling of it is also full of energy and sophisticated. It is also very touching in parts, with the romantic relationship tenderly handled and the subject done in good taste. Not a dull moment in sight. The cast are on top form with sparkling and never static chemistry together, with Marie Prevost and Adolphe Menjou particularly good.

In conclusion, great. 9/10

Silent cinema is not inherently inferior to the sound cinema, but many silent pictures, especially those from the early-to-mid 1920s, seem stilted in comparison to their talkie counterparts due to an over-reliance on title cards, and a lack of faith in the audience's ability to "read" images. Fortunately, they aren't all like this, thanks to the inventive boldness of the era's greatest filmmakers.

To start at the very beginning (a very good place to start), The Marriage Circle is the first comedy Ernst Lubitsch made in Hollywood. It's been pointed out that there was an abrupt change in pace compared to his earlier Berlin comedies, which were non-stop riotous farces. This is true, but The Marriage Circle also sees an enormous shift in tone. Lubitsch's pictures in his home country were absurd to the point of being surreal, staged with an emphasis on exaggeration and peopled with theatrical caricatures. The Marriage Circle however depicts a reasonably realistic situation, albeit a comically improbable one. There is no slapstick here, but neither is it a witty verbal comedy. Instead the humour derives from numerous misunderstandings as five characters become innocently entangled a complex love pentagon. In this, the audience is omniscient – we know everything that is going on – whereas each character knows only enough to make them misconstrue. Lubitsch's problem then, was how to convey this to the audience without spoon-feeding them every detail, and above all keep it funny.

He does it, not just by showing us everything, but by showing us how things are seen by everyone. The camera is never merely presentational; it is always within the action. In virtually every shot, we are either seeing things from a character's point of view or we are focusing on a character's reaction. The angles are never external, watching the players interact with one another; they are always down the line, putting us inside the interaction. And Lubitsch is brave enough – and knows we are intelligent enough – to switch quickly from one perspective to another. For example, in the scene where Mizzi (thinking she is onto something) embraces Dr Braun, we go from Muller seeing them from behind and assuming Mizzi is Charlotte, to his seeing Charlotte in the waiting room (and thus realising the woman in the embrace can't have been Charlotte), to Braun realising Charlotte is watching, to Charlotte realising Braun has been dallying with a female patient… whom she doesn't realise is Mizzi! As you can see, it all sound rather confusing when put it into words, but on screen it's a cinch to follow.

But that's not all that's going on here. As well as getting the right angles on the action, Lubitsch throws in some subtle tricks to imply rather than state the way things are. In the opening scene, it is clearly established that the Stocks's marriage is not the most harmonious, but it is one simple moment that reveals the true extent of the breakdown. Adolphe Menjou sees his wife get into a cab with another man, assuming (wrongly of course!) she may be having an affair. He turns to the camera, his expression unreadable. And then, slowly, a smile spreads over his face.

And this leads me neatly onto the next point, that it is as much the skills of the actors that make this wordless fiasco workable. The two lead men, Adolphe Menjou and Monte Blue, are not comedy actors in the normal sense, but they exhibit great comic timing and control. Just as the story is believable but unlikely, their performances are naturalistic but extreme. Menjou is the master of the withering glance and the long-suffering sulk. You get the impression, just by looking at his face, that here is a man who was not cut out for marriage. Blue, on the other hand, expertly portrays the complete opposite, a modest and honest man who seems unaware of his own attractiveness. You pick up his character from some neat little gestures; such as him nervously pulling at his collar to cool off – something you normally only see cartoon characters doing. Florence Vidor has the restrained demeanour of the only entirely normal person caught up in this situation, and gives a wonderful straight performance that counterpoints all the others. Creighton Hale is the only one of the players who is somewhat hammy and unrealistic, but as a more marginal and somewhat ridiculous character, he is allowed, and even helps give the picture its slightly silly edge. Marie Prevost is the only one of the five who is not exceptional, but she is by no means bad, and at least fits the part.

Lubitsch himself claimed this was his favourite of all his own pictures, and the only one which if he had to do again he would change nothing. It was well liked by his contemporaries too, and in the dying days of the silent picture you can see a significant move towards more sedate and subtle silent comedies, especially in the work of directors like Rene Clair and Leo McCarey. And after that of course, the talkies would come along, and it would all change again.

Through the urging of actress Mary Pickford, Austrian Ernst Lubitsch sailed to America to direct her dramatic film 1923's 'Rosita.' Newly-formed Warner Brothers Studio, familiar with Lubitsch's well-earned reputation in producing light-hearted comedies, signed him immediately to a three-year, six picture contract, giving him the right to select his actors and film crew. So unusual was the contract at the time, the studio also granted him final say on the finished motion picture.

Lubitsch rolled up his sleeves and directed what became his signature trademark: a sophisticated romantic comedy that suggested rather than overtly displaying possible infidelities in a marriage. His February 1924 "The Marriage Circle" was the director's first American comedy, jump-starting an impressive body of work still studied today by film academia.

"The Marriage Circle" consists of three couples: one, Charlotte (Marie Prevost), instigates a series of hinted extra-marital affairs in two other marriages. Inspired by Charlie Chaplin's 'A Woman of Paris,' Lubitsch saw the possibilities of well-meaning events having the potential of spiraling out of control when one spouse suspects the other of cheating when an innocent act is interpreted the wrong way.

Based on a Lothar Schmidt play, 'Only A Dream,' "The Marriage Circle" begins with the morning ritual of a couple ignoring one another, establishing a cold relationship between the two. Professor Josef Stock (Adolphe Menjou) is the disgruntled hubby unhappy with his selfish wife, Charlotte. Spotting her getting into a cab with a gentleman (Monte Blue), who's actually a stranger picking up flowers for his wife, Stock immediately suspects the worst and hires a detective to tail his wife. 'The Lubitsch touch,' a much-interpreted term applied to the director's style of sophisticated, witty charm mixed in with a dose of nuanced sexuality, is first seen in an American production in "The Marriage Circle." Marie Prevost, who played Charlotte, was a early favorite actress of Lubitsch when he first came to the United States. She played in several of his films before released by Warner Brothers in 1926. Her roles on the screen diminished after that. She became depressed and turned to alcohol and food, gaining a lot of weight in the process. She died at the age of 38 on January 1937, leaving only $300 in her estate. Her post-career poverty was given as a prime example of spurring the Hollywood community to rally around the proposed Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, operated by a charitable group designed to provide assistance and residential care for those in the film industry who are undergoing financial hardships later in life.

So admired has been "The Marriage Circle" that the American Film Institution nominated it for the Top 100 Funniest Movies of All Time as well as a nominee for its Top 100 America's Greatest Love Story Movies. Directors as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, and Douglas Sirk all expressed an affection towards Lubitsch's second American film.