By Candlelight

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...

You can tell that "By Candlelight" is a film that came out before the tough Production Code of mid-1934. This is because this comedy also talks about adultery...and it certainly does NOT condemn it in any way!

Josef (Paul Lukas) is the valet to a prince...and a very good one. So when the prince is out whoring around with other men's wives, Josef, as best he can, runs interference. One day, the prince decides to go on a journey...and he sends his valet ahead of him to get his summer home ready. On the train ride, Josef meets a charming woman and Marie (Elissa Landie) assumes that Josef is THE prince...and pursues him. Little does she know that he's no prince...and Marie has a secret of her own to hide.

This is a cute sex comedy...minus the sex. As usual, Lukas is charming and the film has a few nice laughs.

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.

... and I do not know why the folks at Universal don't do more to get treasures such as these out to the public, at least using the manufactured on demand method that Warner Brothers and MGM/UA are using.

This is one of the sophisticated precodes revolving around a series of mistaken identities and misrepresentations. The basic plot is that Josef (Paul Lukas) is butler to the carousing Prince Alfred von Rommer (Nils Asther). Josef helps the prince whenever he gets in a tight spot with one of his many lady friends - with that tight spot primarily consisting of protests and threats being raised by one of the ladies' husbands popping up unexpectedly. After one such episode the prince decides to take a vacation in Monte Carlo and he sends Josef on ahead with the luggage. On the train Josef notices an attractive young lady (Elissa Landi) and tries to make a play for her himself. He is only modestly successful until the young woman sees Josef's luggage and notices the prince's coat of arms. Now Josef has to pretend to be the prince in order to continue courting the lady. What happens when the real prince arrives? Is the young lady who she seems to be? Will those angry husbands now be after Josef since he has taken the prince's identity? Watch and find out.

The main negative in this film is the casting of Paul Lukas as Josef. This time it is not his accent that is the problem but his age. It is a bit of a stretch to believe that a man in his 40's would have such wide-eyed hero worship for the younger prince and his philandering ways. Nils Asther as the prince gives a charming and effortless performance, behaving genuinely amused at the uncomfortable situations in which he is placed. Like Lukas, Asther also had a heavy accent, and that and a contract dispute pretty much finished his acting career shortly after this film was made.

Highly recommended as one of the great sophisticated precodes, although you probably won't be able to find a good print of it. I know I haven't been able to find one yet.