Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Karst ★★★★★ 1

  perfect, i think i’m gonna love lubitsch movies

• 

  Review by Adam Friedland 2

  Watch film from old Great Depression in new Great Depression

• 

  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 2

  93

  What the movies are all about - hot thieves scamming and then falling in love.

• 

  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★½ 3

  Here we have a typically sophisticated and fashionable comedy graced by the renowned Lubitsch 'Touch'; a film which wears its amorality as a badge of pride and notable for the quickfire wit and acting skills of Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall as they portray jewel thieves plying their trade across Continental Europe.

  This is a production of such elegance and lightness that we can only weep for an art form seemingly lost forever..

• 

  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★★

  Watching one of Lubitsch Continental drawing room Pre-code masterpieces, like Trouble in Paradise (1932) or Design for Living (1933), feels now like witnessing a lost art. Witty, louche comedic gems where crime pays and creates sexual frisson. Theft goes unpunished and polyamory unjudged. Was the world ever this sophisticated and subtle? How did Hollywood forget how to do this?

  I feel like someone in the thousand or so years between the sacking of Rome and Donatello -- one who’s known only flat, exaggerated medieval saints and gargoyles. Then suddenly he comes across a Grecian sculpted Venus and marvels at the delicate curves and drapery and wonders how it was accomplished and if anyone would ever be able to do this again.

• 

  Review by Arta ★★★★ 2

  This was made in 1932 for general audiences. What happened? when was America so sophisticated? and how could we have gone so far in the other direction?

  Peter Bogdanovich

• 

  Review by Tim Brayton ★★★★★ 1

  "If I were your father, which fortunately I am not, and you made any attempt to handle your own business affairs, I would give you a good spanking - in a business way, of course."

  "What would you do if you were my secretary?"

  "The same thing."

  "You're hired."

• 

  Review by Joel Haver ★★★★ 3

  There’s something almost otherworldly about how modern pre-code Hollywood can feel. From the humor to the acting to even the technical filmmaking, there’s so much at play here that still feels “hip”. So often we forget that, even 90 years ago, people were still scandalous and perverse as ever. I was having quite an anxious night and this movie brought me back down, and for that alone I’m grateful. I’m excited to watch more Ernst Lubitsch, who one of my favorite college professors always raved about and I wish I had listened sooner!

• 

  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★★ 15

  Money is the greatest ambition but an even grander folly in director Ernst Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise.”

  While gangsters were tommy-gunning up one half of Great Depression-era cinemas, an entirely different robbery was underway on the other side. You could say it was manslaughter versus slaughter by manners. 

  In Lubitsch’s “Paradise,” wealth, those who have it, and those who pursue it are locked an eternal battle of wits. All appear to be armed to the teeth, but down to the last, they are packing blanks. Barbed fire is exchanged, but the only casualty is peace and tranquility. And good riddance to that. 

  “Paradise” and its story about two cons scamming a rich young widow is, on its surface, peak escapist…

• 

  Review by ✨Angelica Jade Bastién🔮 ★★★★ 1

  In many ways, dazzling. Just pristine in its construction — acting, cinematography, direction (such a light touch!) and that dialogue! But in this house it’s Miriam Hopkins supremacy. (Except when it comes to Bette Davis, y’all know what’s up.) So it’s a touch frustrating she gets sidelined a bit in the second half because she’s the character/performance who most captured my interest. You’re supposed to steal from the rich, not fall in love with them!!

• 

  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½

  Ernst Lubitsch always conveyed a palpable satisfaction in subverting Hollywood's professed doctrines of decency, and in Trouble in Paradise his quick and inventive humour took swings at every moral principle he could conjure. It's ingenious from the beginning, and there are numerous creative strategies employed in the representation of sexuality within the film while additionally demonstrating that criminality is a rather seductive and trendy pastime.

  The depraved cast of characters, as well as the atmosphere, always remains lively, and the rampant and layered betrayal throughout the narrative together with the widespread fundamental motives of intense and selfish desires are always presented satirically. There's an unmistakable European charm to Lubitsch's films, and he skillfully manipulates the humorous visuals to give rise to those qualities without overworking them.

• 

  Review by KYK ★★★★½

  a business spank

  35mm. Metrograph.