"So This is Paris" is another delightful comedy by Ernst Lubitsch and which features a concert with Charleston dancing that's a quintessential jazz-age cinematic sequence. Once again, the director returns to the themes of marital flirtations with infidelity and the dramatic irony of the spectator knowing more than do the characters, who fall prey to a series of comical misconceptions based on partial views and information, lies and masquerade. Such elements occupied much of his German oeuvre, as well as being prevalent in his more sophisticated romantic comedies in Hollywood beginning with "The Marriage Circle" (1925). While "So This is Paris" lacks the nuanced and subtle acting and craft of that predecessor, it makes up for it, at least in part, with some zany action, including a considerable amount of camera trick effects and even a hint of Freudian homoeroticism involving a cane.
Based on a German operetta, "Die Fledermaus," which in turn was based on a French farce, "La Réveillon," Lubitsch had already adapted a version of the stage story in one of his early German comedies, "The Merry Jail" (1917), a film that is fairly indicative of the type of broad humor the director employed during his early career. The Parisian setting here is inconsequential to the narrative, but Paris was usefully associated with sexual promiscuity, so this film's title was a convenient advertisement of the subject matter, as well as surely allowing Lubitsch and company to portray adultery without drawing the ire of censors, which it presumably would've had it been set too close to home, say, in Middle America, or, too honestly, in Hollywood (which was already having enough problems from associations with deviancy in the minds of moralists).
Meanwhile, the hint of homosexuality between the two husbands, the doctor and the actor, and the phallic symbolism of the walking stick would've presumably largely escaped notice. For much of the picture, the actor possesses the doctor's cane, wagging it, as he goes to visit the doctor's wife, Suzanne, while her husband is away--although, little does he know, the doctor is away visiting his dancer wife--the two men oblivious to each other's attempts to cuckold one another. Having already complimented the actor on his shirtless physique in a sheik costume in the fashion of Rudolph Valentino, and having misinterpreted the actor's complement of Suzanne's profile as alluding to that of his own, the doctor admires himself in a mirror. He also has a vexing dream where his lost cane pokes him in the face and forces its way down his throat, as Freudian film theorists delight. Similarly, the actor, during one of his attempts to woo Suzanne, literally deflowers her vase, tossing the stems at her.
As in prior films, especially "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), Lubitsch gets a lot of play from characters being mislead by what they see through windows; in this case, from the fact that the doctor and Suzanne see the neighboring couple from across the street this way. Point-of-view shots are also effectively used later, in addition to superimpositions, including Kaleidoscopic effects, to represent drunkenness. There's also masquerade and mistaken identities: the actor dressed as a sheik, oblivious to his attracting the desire of Suzanne and the jealousy of the doctor (who initially puts a thermometer in her mouth and diagnoses her as too hot); the dancer, in a setup similar to a scene in "The Marriage Circle" and its remake "One Hour with You" (1932), inventing an imaginary illness as a pretext to bring the doctor away from home; the jail mixup; and Suzanne even wearing a mask to trick her husband into an affair with his own wife. One gag that reverses this general dramatic irony, however, is the tirade of insults between the doctor and a policeman, with the detail of the remarks being left to the imagination or for the amusement of lip readers.
Yet, the most remarkable sequence here has to be the Artists Ball. It's framed by Suzanne listening to the orchestra from the event over the radio, with the announcements from it appearing on the screen as overlaying text. The Ball itself is unlike the rest of what is a rather intimate and small-scale production, with a large crowd of Charleston dancers and large ballroom. Although the scale is right, it's surely not quite the kind of scene that earned Lubitsch the title of "the Griffith of Europe," although it's somewhat reminiscent of a dance scene in his German film, "The Oyster Princess" (1919), as well as anticipating his later musicals. As the jazz band plays and the flappers gyrate, the sequence features a series of dissolving images, superimpositions, prominent displays of dancing legs, twirling lights and the first of the film's multiple-exposure Kaleidoscopic effects. Apparently, Lubitsch and cinematographer John J. Mescall were having a ball on this production, exploring the limits of trick effects as old as the days of Georges Méliès, repurposed for the Roaring Twenties. There's even a shrinking effect via superimposition to reflect the metaphor of the doctor's smallness and emasculation in a later scene.
It's unfortunate that this film has yet to receive wider distribution. I would love to see a quality print, as the copy I viewed had a washed-out look. It's bad enough that most silent films are considered lost, including such Lubitsch classics as "Kiss Me Again" (1925) and the Best-Picture nominee "The Patriot" (1928); the ones that remain, such as "So This is Paris," or "Rosita" (1923) and "Three Women" (1924), deserve to be released from the vaults. The Artists Ball scene, however, is featured on the DVD "Light Rhythms: Music and Abstraction," as part of the "Unseen Cinema" series.
