That Lady in Ermine

That Lady in Ermine ★★★½

Very peculiar ghost comedy/operetta/sex farce that represents an unlikely union between Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch. The Technicolor is eye-popping, if not exactly tasteful or perhaps even good--this monotonously oversaturated retinal assault is, I suspect, exactly what Jack Cardiff and his peers were trying to avoid. Betty Grable hasn't yet become a favorite, admittedly in the few roles of hers I've seen, but Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., always impresses. The script isn't quite incoherent, but it's a bit scattered and top-heavy with conceits--mythical kingdoms, living paintings, time reversals, dreams--obscuring what the core premise is meant to be. Yet I might have enjoyed it more for this; the ghost comedies of '30s and '40s Hollywood--a real if small subgenre--tend to strike me as a little insulting to the intelligence of both the characters and audience in belaboring the gimmick of the apparitions' supernatural abilities. ERMINE throws more at the viewer than he or she could be expected to comfortably take in. Most oddly, the final scene reminds me most strongly of Brian De Palma's dream movies--DRESSED TO KILL, FEMME FATALE, RAISING CAIN--than anything else.

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