(1932)

Starring Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Edward Everett Horton; dir: Ernst Lubitsch

An artful con he may be, but tuxedoed jewel thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) is, early on in Trouble In Paradise, humanized for us and thus we are on his side the whole way. It’s a major reason Trouble In Paradise wins so many hearts. Never kid a kidder, but seeing this seducer being seduced, and knowing his discovery of offhandedly chic socialite Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) is accidental and not part of his grand design enables us to get swept along with Gaston in this dreamworld 1930s romance.

Of course ‘suave’ and ‘urbane’ are synonymous with Herbert Marshall, but it’s an openness, a vulnerability he brings to this cupid’s-victim role that endears him to us in Trouble In Paradise. And being a Depression-era comedy, it’s implicit Gaston is not of the rich, as their tools of theft are less hands-on than his. The starchy, be-whiskered board members Mariette continually frustrates with her disinterest in business affairs (unlike the other variety) underline this point neatly.

And as a thirties comedy, irrespective of which side of the 1934 Hays Code of censorship, its Deco sets and shimmering gowns are simply delish! That the entire decade made for unsurpassable comedy classics shows how little this censorship was deterministic, with other factors obviously being much more decisive and influential in the common qualities (situational farce, class insurgency, gossamer settings, etc) of thirties Hollywood comedy. Yet for all that, the sexual frissons are real here.

Class being a recurrent factor from pre-Code to screwball, Marshall’s ingratiating Gaston is less about a con job (from outside) than an insinuation, a worming into the confidences of the rich (from inside - or so it seems to them). As such, Trouble In Paradise is an undermining of haute bourgeois pretensions any Depression audience could love.

Personally I think Lubitsch improved with better writing such as he enjoyed in 1939’s Ninotchka (Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett) and the still-outrageous To Be Or Not To Be (1942). But these are mere dietary preferences. Even for those who prefer a more meaty comedy intake, champagne such as this is always welcome.