the spoiled brat’s stomp
by Douglas Messerli
Hanns
Kräly and Ernst Lubitsch (writers), Ernst Lubitsch (director) Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) / 1919
We soon learn that perhaps the most
outrageous outsized product of this man’s estate is his daughter, Ossi (the
noted German movie star Ossi Oswalda), who, Mister Quaker is quietly told, is
throwing a fit in her room, whereupon the camera shifts to a room littered with
broken pottery, furniture and other objects she has apparently been tossing
into the air in anger. Ossi, clearly a spoiled problem child, has just read of
the marriage of the Shoe Polish King’s daughter to a count, and is furious that
she has been outdone. Why hasn’t her father found her a husband of the same
rank?
Quaker, who obviously has never denied his
daughter anything, calls upon the matchmaker, Seligson (Max Kronert) who, after
failing to provide an appropriate companion for a tall and plain woman client,
suggests a Prince, Nucki (Harry Liedtke), as Ossi’s husband. Off he goes to the
Prince’s abode, where we quickly perceive that Nucki, despite his royal
heritage, is suffering hard financial times, as he and his valet, Josef (Julius
Falkenstein) wash and hang up
their meager clothing to dry. Seligson’s knock
on the door results in a scramble to convert their rundown flat into a place
appropriate for a prince. In high comic mockery, the two quickly hoist a chair
atop a table to create a ridiculous throne into which Nucki climbs as Seligson
enters (after much delay) to suggest the match.
Nucki, it is quickly revealed—although
faced with poverty—is nearly as spoiled as Ossi, and will not deign it worthy
of his attention to check out the Oyster King’s proposition, but instead
dresses up his valet in his own suit and sends him off to check the girl out in
his stead.
At the Quaker mansion, Josef is also left
waiting, the master having retired for his afternoon nap, and his daughter,
attended by a legion of maids, determines to bathe and be given a massage
before dressing and attending to the visitor. So begins what one might describe
as the first major event of this terpsichorean-dominated picture, as the
impatient replacement-suitor, quite insanely begins connects up the vast mosaic
patterns of the floor in a series of movement that can only be described as a
kind of formal dance. In fact, one might describe his situation as being the
central problem facing nearly all the figures in this satire: faced with such
vast emptiness of thought and activity, they seek out ways to engage with one
another less with an intent to communicate than with patterned movement.
Indeed, even before Josef can explain who
he is and why he has come, Ossi—although clearly disappointed with his appearance
and inability to express himself—has swept him up into her own hurry to get
hitched. While her father continues in his self-induced coma, Ossi has trundled
the Prince’s representative off to a minister who marries them, much like a Las
Vegas marriage drive-in, before he can blink out a response.
In this beautifully conceived scene all
guests, kitchen workers, servants, and even the orchestra conductor (Kurt
Bois)—who busy with his hands dances by jutting out his behind—are suddenly
caught up in a frenzy of of the music. This scene alone is worth watching
Lubitsch’s film, for it realizes yet another series of images that we encounter
in the post-war German art of the Weimar period in the works of George Grosz,
Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix—along with a dash of Josephine Baker!
After the party, Ossi sends the drunken
Josef to bed in room separate from her own.
At that very moment Nucki is picked up and
thrown into their midst as a would-be candidate for their organization’s
activities, which quickly appears to have little to do with curing the
sufferers but involves the discovery of attractive young drunks.
One by one, Ossi knocks out her opponents
and wins Nucki as her lover, at the very same moment when Josef has awakened
and, peeking through her keyhole, discovers her in bed with another man. Rushing
off to find his father-in-law, he soon returns and enters the room to confront
the stranger; but when he discovers her would-be lover is Nucki, proclaims the
two already married, since he has married Ossi in the Prince’s name!
The wedding party that follows, for the
first time in this film, is a sensibly-sized affair, with only Ossi, Nucki, and
Quaker pontificating at a small dinner table. In the middle of a conversation
the lovers sneak off, and when Quaker discovers their disappearance, he
follows, also peering into the keyhole while declaring, for the first time in
this comic romp, that he is finally “impressed.”
Love has found a way to bring an end,
finally, to the infections romps of these clearly mad light-trippers.
A satire about wealth and power mixed with
a large dash of what would later be described as a screwball comedy, Lubitsch’s
work very much looks forward to films such as It Happened One Night and My
Man Godfrey.
Los Angeles, May
3, 2015
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