Movie Review – Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Written by Samson Raphaelson, Grover Jones, and Ernst Lubitsch
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch turned his back on his father’s tailoring business to go into movies. Lubitsch was a German-born Ashkenazi Jew. By age 19, he was a member of a prestigious German theater, and two years later, he made his screen debut. After appearing in 30 films between 1912 and 1920, Lubitsch realized his passion was not in performing but as a writer and director. He garnered international acclaim with his German films. Of his three films released in 1921, all three ended up on The New York Times’ top movies list. By the end of 1921, Lubitsch was sailing to the United States, where he would begin a prolific career that would serve to influence other filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder to Martin Scorsese and more. The thing that makes Lubitsch’s work stand out from his contemporaries is maturity, particularly an acceptance that human beings have and enjoy sex.

By the time Trouble in Paradise was made, Lubitsch had been working in Hollywood for eleven years. Based on a stage play, the film follows Gaston (Hebert Marshall), a master thief, and Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a skilled pickpocket. They meet while posing as aristocrats in Venice but quickly & accurately size each other up. Instead of ruining the other’s con, they fall madly in love. Later, in Paris, Gaston steals a diamond-encrusted purse from Madame Colet (Kay Francis), a perfume maven. She offers a large reward, and Gaston uses an assumed name and returns it, claiming he found it tossed away. 

Gaston finds Madame Colet to be an incredibly charming person. She becomes enamored with him and hires the man as her private secretary. Gaston also manages to get Lily a job in the office while keeping their relationship secret. The problem is that Gaston is starting to develop feelings for Madame Colet and she for him. She also has two suitors, the Major (Charles Ruggles) and Francois (Edward Everett Horton), who are intent on uncovering the true identity of this stranger who has wooed Colet. It’s a complicated romantic comedy-drama that perfectly showcases Lubitsch’s talents.

I absolutely loved this film. “The Lubitsch Touch” was a term coined to describe the reality the director’s films take place in. While the movies say Paris, Venice, or London, the actual settings of the pictures are in Lubitschland. This is a place where everyone is an eloquent speaker, and matters of sex & relationships are discussed and handled very maturely. Many contemporary films clearly follow in the footsteps of Lubitsch, but they lack the sophistication of the ahead-of-its-time. There are flirtatious, innuendo-laden conversations, thanks to this being pre-Code, that feel unlike anything you’d expect from an older film. It puts modern films to shame with how blunt they are rather than using language to provide a more poetic way of talking about sex. 

What shocked me was how amoral the film was. It never judges Gaston or Lily for their chosen professions. They target the wealthy, who can quickly recover from such losses, so little harm is done. Even the love triangle element is handled very maturely. We understand why Gaston and Madame Colet would fall for each other, yet we also appreciate Lily’s pain at feeling betrayed and why Gaston makes the decision he does in the end. I love that no one was the “bad guy” in the situation. They were three adults attempting to navigate a complicated, sensitive situation.

As we’ll see in the other pre-Code movies, we are reminded of how censorship alters a society’s perceptions, even of itself. So many of us view “old movies” as more chaste and less relatable. They certainly became like that once the industry began imposing puritanical censorship. There was a considerable period before that when many movies were made for grown-ups. They focused on things adults experience and delivered in a manner that respected the audience’s intelligence.

As we look closer at Trouble in Paradise, one of the film’s key themes emerges, which is the toil of accumulating wealth. Gaston and Lily’s lives have been centered around ways to get wealth by outwitting the already wealthy. Madame Colet is a highly isolated person because of her wealth. She finds it hard to trust many people because they are often only kind to her to get her money. It explains why Gaston, being a bit charming, quickly earns her trust. He can present himself as one not out to steal from her while secretly planning to take what he can. What complicates the inhuman grind for money is the natural desire for love. 

Lubitsch does an excellent job of humanizing characters it would be easy to dislike. His work’s charm is in finding a way to get us to love scoundrels without going along with everything they do. Unsurprisingly, Wes Anderson cites Lubitsch as a significant influence on The Grand Budapest Hotel. The film’s weakest element is how Lily gets sidelined in the second half. I see many ways she could have played a more significant role, and it’s disappointing that she doesn’t get to have a character arc that is as robust as Gaston and Madame Colet. It’s a good film, though. And as for our tour of Lubitsch’s work, we’re off to a grand start.