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The title is part of the rituals of seduction, the master has his lover by the piano when the lights go out, the servant who dutifully shut off the electric fuse brings a candelabra. Not a smiling lieutenant but a frazzled butler (Paul Lukas), hurrying the Prince (Nils Asther) and his date (Esther Ralston) when her husband knocks at the door. "But the Countess told me he was dead." "He sounds like a very angry corpse, Your Highness." (She sneaks away, the second pillow on the bed is put away.) The royal coat of arms on the baggage catches the eye of the lady on the train (Elissa Landi), the butler pretends to be the nobleman and sweeps her off her feet, she has a little masquerade of her own. "A Cinderella complex, perhaps?" Don Giovanni in one hand and The Admirable Crichton in the other, James Whale the frisky wit who jumps with Lubitsch. Masks and streamers aboard the carousel, a seesawing POV for the intoxicated heroine, "everything's waltzing!" Repeated routines and places traded, the memoirs of the great Lothario make for an unreliable handbook. "Women, madame, are like cigars." "Cigars?" "Once you let them go out, they are never so good again." Lukas in top hat and bathrobe like Bela Lugosi as farceur, just one part of an ensemble made to run on tiptoes for seventy minutes by Whale. The gold cigarette case and the high-heeled slipper have their roles to play, the backless gown at the Monte Carlo roulette triggers a malentendu with a tracking shot out the casino door and behind a row of trees. Love sorts everything out, "not exactly princely, but very effective." Hitchcock has a similar position the following year with Waltzes from Vienna. With Dorothy Revier, Lawrence Grant, Warburton Gamble, and Luis Alberni. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |