The Doll
(Die Puppe) (Projektions-AG Union, Germany, 1919)
Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch; scen.: Ernst Lubitsch, Hanns Kräly; cast: Ossi Oswalda (Ossi), Max Kronert (Baron von Chanterelle), Herman Thiming (Lancelot), Victor Janson (Hilarius, Ossi’s father), Karga Köhler (Hilarius’s wife); DCP 4K, 68’ (transferred 18 to 24 fps), tinted; intertitle/subtitle language: DE/EN, PL; source: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung.
The original – and still official – source credit for ”The Doll” is puzzling. The attributed inspiration for Hanns Kräly and Lubitsch’s scenario is an elusive work (whose nature is not clearly specified) by the equally elusive A.E. Willner, ”Eine lustige Geschichte aus einer Spielzeugschachtel” (A Merry Story from a Toybox), in turn inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ”Der Sandmann” (1816). The principal derivation from the Hoffmann story is the notion of an animated doll – the character of Coppelius also inspired the 1870 Saint-Léon ballet. On the contrary, however, ”The Doll” closely follows Maurice Ordonneau’s libretto for Edmond Audran’s 1896 opera ”La Poupée”. (In 2012, Pordenone audiences saw and heard Mariette Sully in a number from the premiere production, in the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre programme.) The character names are the same in opera and film, except for the heroine Alésia, who now becomes Ossi, in tribute to the actress who plays her – Ossi Oswalda (1897-1947), who had starred in a dozen Lubitsch comedies since 1916. Was it commercial expediency to turn such a determinedly blind eye to a work still very much in circulation and copyright?
The Willner title does at least define the curious and charming little prologue (Anfangszene) performed by Lubitsch himself in the person of a celestial property man (requisiteur). Out of a huge toybox he takes and erects the elements of a cardboard scene – a cottage at the top of a hill with conifers and a road winding down to a pool. Outside the cottage he places two stiff little dolls, which abruptly come to life as mother’s-boy Lancelot and his wet-nurse. Lancelot tumbles and slides into the pond, and, tearfully rescued, begs the sun to come out and dry him. A cartoon sun beamingly obliges. The style is thus definitively established for a children’s fairy story, in which anything is possible. The hair of Hilarius the doll-maker will literally stand on end, or instantly turn white with shock. He will be carried into the skies by a bunch of toy balloons (losing his trousers en route). Sun and moon are at beck and call. The legs of the horses that draw the wedding coach quite evidently belong to four men, who sit down comfortably to rest between trips and have their own ideas about when and whether they will next feel like working. (…)
The story is simple enough: Lancelot has a terror of the opposite sex, but his uncle insists that as his heir, the boy must marry. The monks (in ”La Poupée” Lancelot was himself a novice), with their greedy eyes on his inheritance, propose a solution: Lancelot shall acquire a life-size animated doll from Hilarius, and present her as his bride, thereby avoiding the embarrassing necessity of consummation. But the scheme goes wrong when Hilarius’ apprentice breaks the doll, and its place is taken by the doll-maker’s seductive and very flesh-and-blood daughter Ossi...
Audiences of 1919 were certainly not naïve enough to miss the double entendres. Hilarius’ life-sized girl dolls are advertised as “Suitable for Bachelors, Widowers and Misogynists”. The startled Lancelot is instructed, “Be sure to oil her twice a week,” and when asked by his nervous uncle as he departs for the honeymoon if he needs any advice, cheerfully responds, “No – I have the instruction manual.” His particular aversion to sex raises an eyebrow now and then. Hilarius’ small apprentice, on the contrary, brazenly solicits his boss’s elderly wife, offering to trade his kisses for chocolate pudding.
In the words of the old music hall song, “It’s not what he says, it’s the way that he says it”. Lubitsch’s comedy is here at its most visual, relying on the wit of the camera movement and editing and the performances. Lubitsch, the born comic actor, famously instructed his players how every scene and every gesture should be played, and has assembled a faultless and evidently suitably compliant cast. Hermann Thimig had worked with Lubitsch and Oswalda two years before, in Ossis Tagebuch, and is here the perfect scared misogynist. Fifteen-year-old Gerhard Ritterband is a comic revelation as Hilarius’ apprentice; a good singer, the young actor was to have success in early sound films, but his promising career was cut short by Nazism, on account of a Jewish parent.
The toybox treatment apparently disarmed criticism, and the only contemporary moral outrage recorded in Germany was due to Lubitsch’s unflattering, albeit comic, portrait of the high-living, greedy, and manipulative denizens of the monastery. American censors were sharper-eyed: the film was banned in New York, and seems only to have had limited art-house release in 1928. Though fickle about such statements, Lubitsch often said that ”The Doll” was his favourite film.
David Robinson
The film was digitized and restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in 2010.
Sun, Apr 22 | 4pm | Kino Iluzjon
music: Pin Park