The Marriage Circle

I found The Marriage Circle pretty annoying more for the characters than the acting.

Annoying Mizzi (Marie Prevost) is in a bad marriage to Adolphe Menjou so she decides to go after her friend's doctor husband (Monte Blue) by constantly calling for his services by pretending to be sick. The whole premise here is that the vamp has only to bat an eyelash or drop a shoulder strap and the dopey man falls to his knees enslaved. Monte is married to Florence Vidor and his business associate (Creighton Hale) is mad for her. But Flo loves Monte ... until she suspects he may be playing around (which he is not). The more Monte resists Marie, the more determined she becomes to land him.

Round and round it goes with Marie inserting herself in Monte's life while dumb Flo thinks he's after Miss Hofer (Esther Ralston). The whole conceit is based on no one's being able to see the obvious. This might seem like a sly sex romp but Marie's character is just not likable nor are we ever given any reason for her disdain of Adolphe.

Mizzi should have been tossed out on her ear after causing all this trouble.

An excellent score by the Mont Alto group.

Professor Stock (Adolph Menjou) and wife Mizzi (Marie Provost) have reached an impasse in their marriage and he wants out. Mizzi's best friend Charlotte ( Florence Vidor ) is blissfully married to Dr. Charles Braun (Monte Blue). His partner Dr. Mueller (Creighton Hale) has designs on Charlotte who has no interest. When Mizzi sets her sights on Dr. Braun suspicions, stoked by misinterpretation and the diabolical Mizzi arise and accusations fly.

The Marriage Circle is an excellent comedy of errors from the Silent Era featuring the wit and sophistication of Ernst Lubitsch that would go on to brilliantly inform some of the finest adult comedies before and after sound and code enforcement. Here he breezily unfolds his story with a benign amorality and suspense as his quintet of characters all share a little guilt and selfishness.

Vidor is a beauty and paragon of virtue to behold but capable of being petty. Blue and Hale comically pine and mope while Menjou is pure dinner at eight collected. Acting honors however belong to Provost's Mizzi whose side glances and brashness haul the rest of the characters into the circle.

The Marriage Circle is an outstanding example of silent film comedy and in large contrast to the slapstick that still dominated. Doors are closed, not slammed or run through, the humor is sly not pie in the face. Lubitsch conveys it beautifully here as he would into sound as well as influence a generation of filmmakers.

I wanted to retrace some of the steps in the development of the sophisticated romantic comedy film after reviewing some Oscar Wilde adaptations, of all things, the first great one being Ernst Lubitsch's 1925 "Lady Windermere's Fan." Based on another's play, "The Marriage Circle" seems to be where the director first formulated this new direction; from it, one may trace the evolution to modern and later comedies of sex and remarriage--not only drawing a line from here to Lubitsch's subsequent productions, but also to, say, a piece of classic Hollywood cinema such as "The Philadelphia Story" (1940). Even ignoring all of that, "The Marriage Circle" is delightfully light in tone, avoiding blunt moralizing, which somewhat obscures in seemingly superficial fluff what is some clever and subtle filmmaking--the "Lubitsch touch"--although his subsequent "Lady Windermere's Fan" is even better.

The circle of adulterous flirtation begins with a professor hiring a detective to gather evidence for a divorce from his wife, Mizzi, who, indeed, tries to woo the doctor husband of her friend, who, in turn, is admired by her husband's partner Gustav. Initially, the doctor's wife also mistakingly believes that her husband is having an affair with yet another woman. And around they go. The film is full of knowing looks and dramatic irony from characters misreading what they see. Like "Lady Windermere's Fan," there are some nice-looking shots involving windows and doors. A sly smile creeps up on the professor's face after he peers out a window to see his wife getting into a cab with the doctor, and there are a few compositions of characters seen through doorways. Once derided, but now celebrated by some like me, as "the director of doors," Lubitsch also includes a humorous episode where the doctor storms out of an apartment through four doors to get outside.

The cast is OK, although I mostly prefer the leads in Lubitsch's 1932 remake "One Hour with You." Monte Blue plays frazzled well enough as the doctor, but I prefer him in Lubitsch's later picture, "So This is Paris" (1926), and compared to Maurice Chevalier in the 1932 film, he's not preferred. And while I like that Marie Prevost's curls remind me of Clara Bow, her character comes off as too vampish and pathetic next to Genevieve Tobin's joyous Mitzi in the remake. The one big exception to my preference for the 1932 cast is Adolphe Menjou, who is perfect as the impervious professor. One benefit of Mizzi's characterization in this version is that it leads to a virtuoso, some-20 seconds long take of Menjou's startled expression when she hugs him--even though that scene, dropped from the remake, is a rather dramatic red herring. And the opening scene between the two is remarkable for conveying their marriage in disarray visually without needless intertitles.

Circling back, besides the emphasis on looks and the connected use of doors and windows, as well as the comedy of manners and misconceptions of infidelity, "The Marriage Circle" and "Lady Windermere's Fan" have a few more things in common. Both feature potentially adulterous couplings in a garden scene during a party, with the wife mistaking her husband for being caught in the act. Characters in both misread and reveal information from letters and other written documents, including dinner-party seating arrangements. The doctor's hat here also serves a similar function to that of the fan in the other film, and there are similar final scenes involving re-coupling and cars, which both resolve and prevent the narratives from becoming moral lessons. Where I'd fault "The Marriage Circle," by comparison, though, is that it doesn't seem quite as polished. The characters aren't quite as well rounded; the doctor's wife's jealousy on four separate occasions and pushing him away twice, seems repetitive, for instance--rather too circular. That three times shots of letters are repeated bothered me, too--I mean, we already read them, so shots of characters looking at them instead of just the letters themselves would suffice.

To come full circle, "The Marriage Circle," while establishing a precedent, of course, also has its antecedents, besides the earlier, more broad and grotesque comedies by Lubitsch while in Germany. Charlie Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (1923) is a frequently cited one, with the casting of Menjou in both films, in particular, being considered a nod by Lubitsch to Chaplin's display of a more deliberate form of pacing, a witty focus on particular details and a more restrained kind of cinematic acting within a more modern story--even though Chaplin's film suffers, unlike "The Marriage Circle," from its overbearing melodramatics. There are also the prior sex dramedies by Cecil B. DeMille, but they lack a similar level of narrative or visual sophistication, and even their titles indicate their greater gender imbalance, while perhaps simultaneously over-selling the sensationalism of the subject matter ("Old Wives for New," "Male and Female," "Don't Change Your Husband," "Why Change Your Wife?") compared to "A Woman of Paris" and the "The Marriage Circle," which respectively suggest femininity and gender equality, as well as sex. When the doctor's wife here states their infidelities to be "fifty-fifty," she's not far off. (Now, how the guy (DeMille) who went on to make Biblical epics started out with stories of marital infidelity and sexual promiscuity is a development in film history I may want to revisit later, too.) Discovering the formula that worked, Lubitsch remained rather faithful to the production of sophisticated romantic comedies, through his musicals, such as the remake "One Hour with You," to his other classic films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Silent cinema is not inherently inferior to the sound cinema, but many silent pictures, especially those from the early-to-mid 1920s, seem stilted in comparison to their talkie counterparts due to an over-reliance on title cards, and a lack of faith in the audience's ability to "read" images. Fortunately, they aren't all like this, thanks to the inventive boldness of the era's greatest filmmakers.

To start at the very beginning (a very good place to start), The Marriage Circle is the first comedy Ernst Lubitsch made in Hollywood. It's been pointed out that there was an abrupt change in pace compared to his earlier Berlin comedies, which were non-stop riotous farces. This is true, but The Marriage Circle also sees an enormous shift in tone. Lubitsch's pictures in his home country were absurd to the point of being surreal, staged with an emphasis on exaggeration and peopled with theatrical caricatures. The Marriage Circle however depicts a reasonably realistic situation, albeit a comically improbable one. There is no slapstick here, but neither is it a witty verbal comedy. Instead the humour derives from numerous misunderstandings as five characters become innocently entangled a complex love pentagon. In this, the audience is omniscient – we know everything that is going on – whereas each character knows only enough to make them misconstrue. Lubitsch's problem then, was how to convey this to the audience without spoon-feeding them every detail, and above all keep it funny.

He does it, not just by showing us everything, but by showing us how things are seen by everyone. The camera is never merely presentational; it is always within the action. In virtually every shot, we are either seeing things from a character's point of view or we are focusing on a character's reaction. The angles are never external, watching the players interact with one another; they are always down the line, putting us inside the interaction. And Lubitsch is brave enough – and knows we are intelligent enough – to switch quickly from one perspective to another. For example, in the scene where Mizzi (thinking she is onto something) embraces Dr Braun, we go from Muller seeing them from behind and assuming Mizzi is Charlotte, to his seeing Charlotte in the waiting room (and thus realising the woman in the embrace can't have been Charlotte), to Braun realising Charlotte is watching, to Charlotte realising Braun has been dallying with a female patient… whom she doesn't realise is Mizzi! As you can see, it all sound rather confusing when put it into words, but on screen it's a cinch to follow.

But that's not all that's going on here. As well as getting the right angles on the action, Lubitsch throws in some subtle tricks to imply rather than state the way things are. In the opening scene, it is clearly established that the Stocks's marriage is not the most harmonious, but it is one simple moment that reveals the true extent of the breakdown. Adolphe Menjou sees his wife get into a cab with another man, assuming (wrongly of course!) she may be having an affair. He turns to the camera, his expression unreadable. And then, slowly, a smile spreads over his face.

And this leads me neatly onto the next point, that it is as much the skills of the actors that make this wordless fiasco workable. The two lead men, Adolphe Menjou and Monte Blue, are not comedy actors in the normal sense, but they exhibit great comic timing and control. Just as the story is believable but unlikely, their performances are naturalistic but extreme. Menjou is the master of the withering glance and the long-suffering sulk. You get the impression, just by looking at his face, that here is a man who was not cut out for marriage. Blue, on the other hand, expertly portrays the complete opposite, a modest and honest man who seems unaware of his own attractiveness. You pick up his character from some neat little gestures; such as him nervously pulling at his collar to cool off – something you normally only see cartoon characters doing. Florence Vidor has the restrained demeanour of the only entirely normal person caught up in this situation, and gives a wonderful straight performance that counterpoints all the others. Creighton Hale is the only one of the players who is somewhat hammy and unrealistic, but as a more marginal and somewhat ridiculous character, he is allowed, and even helps give the picture its slightly silly edge. Marie Prevost is the only one of the five who is not exceptional, but she is by no means bad, and at least fits the part.

Lubitsch himself claimed this was his favourite of all his own pictures, and the only one which if he had to do again he would change nothing. It was well liked by his contemporaries too, and in the dying days of the silent picture you can see a significant move towards more sedate and subtle silent comedies, especially in the work of directors like Rene Clair and Leo McCarey. And after that of course, the talkies would come along, and it would all change again.

A superb, honest, tender romantic comedy of manners, which features acting today's performers would be hard to match. You can laugh and feel for these characters. Ernst Lubitsch's smart direction keeps the movie always interesting, never dated.

"The Marriage Circle" should be required viewing for today's filmmakers. They'd learn how to reveal characters in emotionally complicated situations with minimum dialogue. And how to tell a story with minimum dialogue. And be funny.