This was begun by Ernst Lubitsch (who also produced) but, after suffering a heart attack, handed over the directorial reins to Preminger (who eventually received sole credit for it!) – as would happen all over again 3 years later when Lubitsch died early on during the production of the Ruritanian Technicolor musical THAT LADY IN ERMINE (1948)! The film under review is actually a Talkie remake of Lubitsch's Silent success FORBIDDEN PARADISE (1924; which seems to be available solely via an incomplete print boasting Czech intertitles!). It is yet another movie dealing with the reign of Catherine II of Russia, known as "The Great"; however, this was made at Fox instead of Paramount (Lubitsch had been Head Of Production there at the time of Josef von Sternberg's magnificent THE SCARLET EMPRESS {1934}). The tone is very different, too: being a comic romantic soufflé as opposed to a flamboyant epic (even if the Queen's various dalliances were still a major plot point of the Sternberg movie), this one ostensibly offered pure wartime escapism
but the result is so flat as to be insulting (depicting potentates as fickle figures concerning themselves with frivolities and rewarding soldiers over their bedroom antics rather than military tactics was hardly wise under such precarious circumstances!), much more so in fact than the accusations of bad taste levelled at Lubitsch's satirical – but not unfeeling – masterpiece TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)!
Despite the typical studio gloss, a most able cast (led by Tallulah Bankhead as a not-so-young Catherine, Charles Coburn as her wily Chancellor, William Eythe breaking into the Palace bearing old news{!} but remaining to become the Queen's new favorite, Anne Baxter in an ALL ABOUT EVE {1950} dry-run as her lady-in-waiting and catty rival for the latter's affections, Vincent Price as the fey French ambassador who spends almost the entire running-time waiting to be received by Catherine{!}, a typically pompous Sig Rumann as the high-ranking officer planning a coup d'etat, Mischa Auer as a flustered sentry and Vladimir Sokoloff as a Palace adjutant) and a script by Edwin Justus Mayer (who also wrote the afore-mentioned Nazi lampoon), the film looks decidedly claustrophobic, is filled with deliberately overstated performances, and comes across as distinctly heavy-handed. Whether all this is the humorless Preminger's doing, however, is hard to determine – since, it must also be said, the famed "Lubitsch Touch" is barely in evidence throughout! Mind you, the picture is not unamusing per se (though hardly as witty as one would have expected given some of the people involved!) and it clearly gets by on sheer professionalism alone: what I find inexcusable is that such money and talent were squandered on an essentially silly, empty charade – and an incessantly verbose one at that!
Despite the typical studio gloss, a most able cast (led by Tallulah Bankhead as a not-so-young Catherine, Charles Coburn as her wily Chancellor, William Eythe breaking into the Palace bearing old news{!} but remaining to become the Queen's new favorite, Anne Baxter in an ALL ABOUT EVE {1950} dry-run as her lady-in-waiting and catty rival for the latter's affections, Vincent Price as the fey French ambassador who spends almost the entire running-time waiting to be received by Catherine{!}, a typically pompous Sig Rumann as the high-ranking officer planning a coup d'etat, Mischa Auer as a flustered sentry and Vladimir Sokoloff as a Palace adjutant) and a script by Edwin Justus Mayer (who also wrote the afore-mentioned Nazi lampoon), the film looks decidedly claustrophobic, is filled with deliberately overstated performances, and comes across as distinctly heavy-handed. Whether all this is the humorless Preminger's doing, however, is hard to determine – since, it must also be said, the famed "Lubitsch Touch" is barely in evidence throughout! Mind you, the picture is not unamusing per se (though hardly as witty as one would have expected given some of the people involved!) and it clearly gets by on sheer professionalism alone: what I find inexcusable is that such money and talent were squandered on an essentially silly, empty charade – and an incessantly verbose one at that!