1921 ‘Die Bergkatze’ Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
A charismatic lieutenant newly assigned to a remote fort is captured by a group of mountain bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce that is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained. A wonderfully anarchic and playfully subversive satire of military life from one of the great comedy filmmakers.
The Mountain Cat, El gato montés, Горная кошка, La chatte des montagne, Bergkatten, Az elvarázsolt fellegvár, Bjergkatten, Lo scoiattolo, Górska kotka, Beijos que se Vendem, La Chatte des montagnes, 山猫リュシカ, 野猫
Germany
Finland
USANR
Germany
Finland
Germany
USA
The Lubitsch touch is a fallen hair extension coiled on snow.
The Lubitsch touch? A mountain bandita erotically tickling her minions’ bums with a whip.
Nothing says touch of Lubitsch like swing jazz marshmallow orgy.
A contraband carrot confiscated from under a conscript's pallet – Lubitsch touch all over.
The Kommandant (Victor Janson) in his art deco fortress awaits the arrival of one Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann), Don Juan of the regiment. In crossing the snowy wastes en route to his post, the epauletted lothario encounters finery fancying brigands, a skull-and-crossbones emblazoned troop led by antic Rischka (Pola Negri). After she catches a glimpse of the officer’s shapely striped pajamas –
You know what, forget it.
Describing the plot of…
A seriously unhinged movie. The majority of shots are framed in decorative cut-outs. Everyone looks slightly (or much more than slightly) insane. Pola Negri gives an endlessly GIF-able performance, and I want to go back in time and hang out with her and be her friend. This is usually described as a satire on militarization, but, honestly, it's way too off-the-rails to be constrained by any one meaning. Bandits. Skulls. Wild mustaches. Sex. Proto-psychedelic sets. (The sets are actually like cartoonized versions of German Expressionist sets.) A dream sequence featuring a band of slightly horrifying marshmallow men. (They're actually supposed to be snowmen, but whatever.)
I imagine this movie would come as a shock to anyone who only knows through…
Cinematic Time Capsule
1921 Marathon - Film #15
"The wench has spirit!"
Lubitsch’s 1921 silent mixes military satire with a romantic farce and tops it off with a heaping helping of manic silliness!
Starring Pola Negri as the feral mountain-woman wildcat who gleefully leads her father’s elfin band of bandits on several drunken escapades and acts of highfalutin bedroom looting.
But despite all the savagery, this wild-eyed Helena Bonham Carter, is still tender-hearted enough to build a shrine to the man she loves... out of a pair of his recently confiscated pants.
It’s looney, it’s goofy and wildly imaginative, with such Lubitsch touches as a literal river of tears, an eat-your-heart-out fever dream, and massive crowds of well-wishing women and…
Every now and again you come across a film where everyone is clearly having so much fun it is infectious rather than self indulgent. Lubitsch and co seem to have some sort of anti-military theme in mind, presumably resonant in 1921 Germany with all the extras looking particularly motley and unkempt but presumably mainly all combat veterans. As most of the reviews point out they all come across as more than a little unhinged, a feel that is helped by the amazing costumes, alpine location shooting, fairy tale sets and Lubitsch framing the image with a succession of cardboard cut out frames to focus your attention.
It's the story of two irresistible people, womanising Lieutenant Alexis, followed by crowds of…
A madcap meet-cute between a military manwhore and a mountain-dwelling maneater. Pretty funny stuff, and the pulchritudinous Pola Negri was a delight as always. Kind of a weird ending, though.
Lubitsch evolves his fare into satire, but a Langian scouring of Weimar Germany this ain't; it's all setup for what Lubitsch does best, telling a romance with more razor-sharp wit, bawdy suggestiveness and convincing tenderness than people can made decades after his death. Would that he had lived forever.
My first Pola Negri movie and she was utterly delightful! I definitely want to check out more of her movies!
Ernst Lubitsch uses conventional cinema framing challenge (impossible)
Ernst Lubitsch goes wild in The Wildcat. There's no other way to describe what goes on here.
Lieutenant Alexis, known among the female sex by the cognomen "Alex the Seducer" has been transferred to the mountain base at Piffkaneiro - where they have to be very strict with how to deal with this Casanova. Lieutenant Alexis is the polar opposite of Lancelot in The Doll, the man so pathologically averse to women that he had to get a mechanical Doll to work out his issues around idealising women.
At his official departure. hundreds of women tearfully mob the car taking Alexis up to the mountains and refuse to let this Lothario leave,…
It takes a little bit of time to get fully warmed up, but even during the early going, this is a magnificent banquet of bawdy Lubitsch humor, particularly during a note-perfect sequence where a veritable sea of weeping women bid adieu to the handsome lieutenant in their midst. And once it allows Pola Negri to go full-blast - in a mode of madcap farce I would never, ever have expected her to be so effortlessly great at - it's pretty wonderful high-energy comic delirium.
But as good as that is, where it really impressed me was in the remarkable holistic quality of its design: this is a film set in a fanciful quasi-real world of gently curving shapes, which are…
Why did you let him go? And the lovely underclothes - I could have used a pair.
Rectangular frames are for squares, this picture comes in all shapes and sizes.
FANTASTIC expressionist set designs, costumes, editing, and modern score. Some truly amazing visual effects. The cut-outs technique to dynamically frame every single scene was genius and incredibly impactful. But uh…. well it's really silly. I'm sure it would have been hysterical at the time but the comedy just kinda rolled over me. The story is really wild and I didn't find it particularly interesting. That being said, I can't overstate enough how extremely well made this is. Fun time.
