Revival: Trouble in Paradise

A new print of Ernst Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE is the revival for this week.


Showtimes:
Saturday, December 12 at Noon
Monday, December 14 at 7 PM
Thursday, December 17 at 9 PM


1932 Ernst Lubitsch. Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Edward Everett Horton, Charles Ruggles, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Greig, Leonid Kinskey. 86m. bw.

"...the most Lubitschian Lubitsch. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins are a pair of professional thieves who fall in love while plundering the Riviera, but when Marshall falls under the spell of the wealthy Parisienne he intends to fleece (Kay Francis), their perfect relationship falters. The bons mots fly and an elegant immorality abounds, while beneath the surface the most serious kinds of emotional transactions are being made." (Dave Kehr)

“One of the gossamer creations of Lubitsch's narrative art...it would be impossible in this brief notice to describe the innumerable touches of wit and narrative skill with which it is unfolded.” (Alexander Bakshy)

“A shimmering, engaging piece of work...in virtually every scene a lively imagination shines forth.” (NY Times)


"I have played Trouble in Paradise to three different generations over the past forty years or so, to the delight of all of them." (Alistair Cooke)

"A masterpiece of light comedy, with sparkling dialogue, innuendo, great performances and masterly cinematic narrative...the masterpiece of American sophisticated cinema." (Leslie Halliwell)

"This movie seemed to have everything: the grace and elegance of the twenties, the egalitarian conscience of the thirties, the visual wit of the silent cinema, and the verbal wit of the talkies." (Andrew Sarris)


"Trouble in Paradise has none of the single-entendre tawdriness or salacious Puritanism that gives pre-Code Hollywood its carnival flavor. Style is substance in Lubitsch's instantly recognized masterpiece: "As close to perfection as anything I have ever seen in the movies," the young Dwight Macdonald wrote in a little literary magazine. Indeed, style is morality....
Never equaled, Trouble in Paradise twinkles like the polestar in the sky above the comedies of Billy Wilder, George Cukor, and (less brightly) Otto Preminger; it anticipates the banter of Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest." (J. Hoberman)