By Candlelight

I should not be surprised at all that James Whale made an Ernst Lubitsch movie. Everyone was doing it. Everyone loved Lubitsch, and they all wanted to imitate him. What Whale made, from a script cowritten by Hans Kraly, Lubitsch's early writing partner, is a fun little ersatz Lubitsch film that misses the Lubitsch Touch (which Billy Wilder called the Super Joke with a specific structure) but has a similar feel. It's a small delight, not near the top of Lubitsch's work or even the best of the imitators like Wyler in The Good Fairy, but it's a fun trifle of a film anyway.

Josef (Paul Lukas) is manservant to the Prince Alfred von Romer (Nils Asther) of Austria. Josef likes to read the works of Casanova while he admires Prince Alfred's ease with the ladies, like what he says to the Countess von Rischenheim (Dorothy Revier), even offering her a very valuable cigarette case that she refuses because how could she explain it to her husband, the Count von Rischenheim (Lawrence Grant)? When Josef takes a train out to the country alone, ahead of the Prince to prepare for his arrival, Josef meets Marie (Elissa Landi), a pretty girl who also reads Casanova and who coincidentally has the same sleeper car as Josef. He's smitten with her, thinking she's a lady and trying out his moves learned from the Prince. She becomes smitten with him when she mistakes him for the Prince. They get off the train to take some time at a country fair. They miss the train. They connect some more.

So, we have a pure Lubitsch setup. Set in Vienna, dealing with two pairs, one royalty the other servants, and a whole lot of masquerade as people pretend to be those they are not. The energy is heightened, bordering on vaudevillian farce rather than Lubitsch's more restrained and witty stylings, and there is no Lubitsch Touch, however Whale creates real momentum and charm as he pushes Josef, in particular, through the mechanisms of the plot. It's a delicate balance between keeping up the fiction for Marie that he's the prince, Prince Alfred having a good time helping Josef along without Josef's input, Josef's embarrassment at seeing his Prince treat him subserviently, and Marie's own secret.

It's not like it's hard to guess her secret either. Whale telegraphs it even if he doesn't make it explicit until the final act.

And once again I'm left with a similar problem when I was enjoying Lubitsch's musicals. There's both too much to mention and too little. The story is spare, a simple farce hinging on mistaken identities, but each scene is filled with lightly comic moments that come and go, flittering away in the wind as Whale just propels the film forward. There's no time to linger on a gag or a witty rejoinder. There's more business to be had in 70-minutes of runtime.

And while I don't think the comedy builds like Lubitsch did, it does keep going at this breakneck pace that works in the film's favor. It's a simple film that understands the kind of comedy it needs to deliver, the kind of character it needs to populate it with, and the pace at which to deliver it in order to entertain.

I should take note of Kraly's name. He's one of four writers on the film, and by the end of the professional relationship with Lubitsch (which ended when Kraly stole Lubitsch's wife from him), I was noting that Kraly's scripts were often just not good enough for Lubitsch. Here, he's one of four voices contributing to the script, and I assume he was a very early voice, providing the setting and characters in the broadest possible terms while the other writers (Ruth Cummings, F. Hugh Herbert, and Karen DeWolf), probably Universal staff writers, punched it up. I assume Whale was part of that process as well (since DeWolf is credited as just dialogue, I assume she worked with Whale most), but this tortured writing process was kind of standard in the studio system. One guy wrote an initial draft followed by others (many of whom went uncredited). It's just a random thought I had the second I saw Kraly's name that percolated as the film continued, and I liked it more than anything Kraly had written for Lubitsch.

Anyway, it's not great comedy, but it's solid stuff. It's a Lubitsch imitation that slightly misses the Lubitsch mark, but Whale does the job well here. It may not be the height of his Universal monster work, but By Candlelight is a gem worthy of appraisal.

Suave butler Paul Lukas greatly admires his wealthy employer, one of those vaguely royal European noblemen who wanders around the continent carrying on romantic affairs. Lukas even practices copying the prince's mannerisms and pickup lines.

Traveling with the prince's luggage, he meets attractive and well dressed Elissa Landi and allows her to think he is the prince himself as they strike up a relationship on the train. They quickly fall in love - and Lukas is reluctant to tell her the truth, afraid that she will not be interested when she learns he is only a butler. Landi, on the other hand, is similarly shifty about her own identity....

Nils Asther is lots of fun as the real prince, who readily plays along with Lukas's game when the opportunity comes up. Landi is fine as the leading lady, sometimes very funny as she alternates between displaying allure and alarm. Lukas is good, too, as the slightly goofy impostor whose scheme starts to get out of control.

The plot and all its little devices - candles, champagne, unscrewing a fuse so the lights go out at the right moment - are not only silly but really rather predictable for the most part. Still, this is a solid entry in the early genre of comedies about misbehaving European royalty.

Robert Wyler was a director for Universal whom Laemmle Jr. had promoted; and he had a familial connection. Robert Wyler's maternal grandmother was a first cousin of Universal owner, Carl Laemmle.

There had been turn downs by Wyler, Whale getting the assignments instead, and also cases in which Wyler had failed to be able to make a satisfactory start, and then Whale was asked to continue them.

'By Candlelight' was one of those latter cases.

It had been very successful a few years earlier as a British stage play. Because Whale had already turned down some efforts by Robert Wyler, who did not have the talent to direct, he was nearly forced to take on the film. Perhaps it was a matter of discretion over valor. In the end, he took it on.

He took Ted Kent, his favorite cutter, and the then competent John Mescall as the camera director. Whale started the film over from the beginning.

He filmed the script as it was for the most part, but he also made a game of it, putting in his own special tricks of the trade.

Carl Laemmle was very happy with the result. He liked the film himself, and it brought in good money just in the nick of time to help save the studio once more, adding some good revenue to the spectacular revenues from Whale's 'The Invisible Man' which were then really piling up.

Whale had a contract offer from Paramount as director. He was very actively considering it, but wasn't sure of LeBaron's own firmness in the position of producer; it was LeBaron's offer.

Laemmle offered Whale both a set of raises to automatically kick in, and producer's credit even though Whale would not actually be the producer.

And it's a good thing for us that Whale took Laemmle's offer, or we'd not have had 'Bride of Frankenstein' or 'Show Boat'.

But I'll always wonder what would have become of Whale's career had he taken LeBaron's offer to come and direct at a really powerful studio, which could have offered him some of the best talent, actors, writers and crew, in the world.

This is a well-regarded minor Whale effort which, like REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? (1935) finds him in fine form tackling sophisticated comedy – though it eschews the zaniness which would mark that film; indeed, this is very much in the Lubitsch style and class!

That said, it was criticized for Paul Lukas' central miscasting but I felt he acquitted himself reasonably well under the circumstances. He plays butler to Nils Asther's suave Prince: asked to precede him on a journey, he is mistaken for the real thing when running into charming Elissa Landi (also traveling incognito above her station!) on a train. The two start a hesitant romance, since each is wary of being exposed; the situation is further complicated when the womanizing Asther catches Lukas at his game in his own house. He is willing to play along and assumes the butler's responsibilities, only he has his eyes on Landi too, who in turn is naturally insulted by his impudence! Incidentally, the title is a reference to Asther's recurring trick for seducing the ladies – pretending that the electricity has gone out and having Lukas set up a romantic candle-lit mood (the Prince, then, is happy to oblige his butler during the latter's own affair)!

The mistaken identity ruse (obviously smoothed by the end) has been a staple in the romantic comedy genre, but Whale handles it with tremendous flair and dexterity. Getting back to Lubitsch and his renowned 'touch', we get an ingenious example of it here: Asther is entertaining the opera singer wife of an aristocrat who, breaking into his house, believes he can hear her voice in the next room…but when he steps inside is met with a gramophone playing one of her arias!; still not satisfied, he asks the Prince if he can call her at their home and Asther offers to do it himself – proceeding to connect the phone to a secondary line elsewhere in the house! By the way, what I said about the re-use of sets (and, for that matter, succinctness – since this runs for just 68 minutes) from one film to the other in my review of Whale's THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR (1933) applies here as well: both Asther's house and that of Landi's masters were already seen in that very picture (with the all-important mirror, also featured in the director's FRANKENSTEIN [1931], intact)!

Again, though, the print I acquired is far from optimal – being exceedingly soft and once more (briefly) boasting fluctuating audio. With this in mind, a DVD set through Criterion's sister label Eclipse – compiling Whale's most notable non-horror work (given that the company is on good terms with Universal anyway) – would be a veritable treat, especially for somebody not yet familiar with gems such as this one...

Charming film. Lukas is not quite suited to the role. Music is played too loud throughout although it is good music. Whale must have done this quick. Not a whole lot of Whale genius here. Still enjoyable for fans of the period.