"A Foxtrot
Epidemic Suddenly Breaks Out During the Wedding…"
Ain’t no party like a Weimar party and the party that you
really need at that party is Ossi Oswalda. Before Pola’s energy Ernst Lubitsch
had Ossi’s optimism; a free-spirited comedian who carried ferocious commitment
to the comedy cause as well as an easy conviction that this all made perfect
sense: marrying the wrong man, being bathed by dozens of servants, picking up
handsome drunks and taking them home, that’s Ossi. Dressing up in drag to go
dancing with your male pal – who thinks you’re a guy - getting blotto and
kissing him all the way home, that’s Ossi too… at a dark time for her country,
this woman knew how to enjoy the moment and she had such gleeful command on screen. Ossi must have helped
so many laugh their way around the misery outside.
Ernst Lubitsch was the man directing of course but Ossi
is the lead singer on his songs and everything stand or falls on her ability to
make us laugh and she is one of those characters with whom it is so easy to
connect even a century down the line. She knows and she knows we know too.
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| Harry Liedtke and Ossi Oswalda share a moment |
Both films are so audacious, so modern and still challenging.
This is the German sense of humour and it is certainly not Hollywood’s… not
even Hellzapoppin’ of the Marx
Brothers or the gentile serial killing of Kind Hearts… it’s playful and
knowingly surreal in a manner that is distinctly more artful.
For The Oyster
Princess (Die Austernprinzessin) we see Mister Quaker, the American Oyster King
(Victor Janson) smoking an unfeasibly large cigar with the help of half-a-dozen
black servants – racial comment duly noted – he is so rich that everything he
does is over-done for him by a moving mass of servants. His daughter Ossi (Ossi!) is spoilt rotten and her main
means of expression during ongoing bouts of boredom is to simply wreck things;
there are always other “things” to replace them…
“Why are you throwing those newspapers?”
“Because all of the vases are broken.”
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| The Oyster King and some staff |
Ossi is perturbed because The Shoe Cream King’s daughter
has married a count and she has decided it is time for her to get one up and
marry a prince. Mister Quaker agrees to “buy” her one and employs Seligson, the
matchmaker (Max Kronert) to source an appropriate model.
Impoverished Prince Nucki (Harry Liedtke) is the man
required but things do not run smoothly as his pal Josef (Julius Falkenstein)
goes to negotiate with the House of Oyster, only to end up marrying Osi in
Nucki’s name… but there’s madness in his method.
There’s a whole truck load of daft surrounding this, Ossi
goes for her extended bath-time, aided by dozens of hand-towel maids, hundreds
wait on the wedding banquet and Ossi is clearly not bothered about who she
marries until she spots a charming drunk, Nucki, and smuggles him home…
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| Prince Nucki's tired and he wants to go to bed, he had a little drink... |
Over and over Mister Quaker says “I’m not Impressed…”
the rich – Americans – are bored but finally, even he is charmed by true love no
matter how convoluted its arrival. Lubitsch balances everything so well and
there’s never a moment when the silly transcends the story – remarkable
discipline for a mad-cap caper and proof that Ernst was a filmmaker first and a
comedy storyteller second.
Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don't Want to
be a Man) (1918)
Of course, we see this too in tonight’s other film, made
the previous year and clearly under the influence of the new winds that were
already blowing strongly into Berlin.
Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don't Want to be a Man and sometimes, I Wouldn’t Want to be a
Man: these are not personal statements you understand just different
versions of the film title…) Ossi Oswalda is energetically an uncontrollable
tomboy who finds the saving graces of her gender through cross-dressing. Now, I
barely grasp the nuances of the modern debate on sex and gender but I do know
that Lubitsch goes further than many would have expected with still-shocking subtleties.
Ossi isn’t asking for equality she’s taking it, gambling,
drinking and grasping masculine and adult entitlements from which her uncle
(Kurt Götz) and governess (Margarete Kupfer) forbid her if only to allow
themselves more time to indulge. Lubitsch highlights the comic hypocrisy of
both as governess carries on smoking Ossi’s cigarette and uncle grabs a bigger
glass to increase the rate of alcoholic intake.
Ossi’s like Iggy with a Lust for Life… worth at least “a
million in prizes”, eating cherries and gobbling candies in her window whilst a
crowd of young men pleads to be fed like so many hungry penguins. She obliges
only for Uncle to chase them away... what the girl surely needs is some
discipline or maybe an adventure! Uncle is called away for important work and
before he goes, he recruits a stern governor to make sure his ward is properly
looked after: Herr Counsellor Brockmüller (Ferry Sikla).
Brockmüller almost immediately brings Ossi to heel with
his startling natural authority – he’s also a bit of a looker girls, and,
indeed boys! But Ossi is not so easily curtailed and she vows to resist whilst
he promises to cut her down to size. The game is afoot!
Ossi decides to play men at their own game and goes off
to the gentlemen’s outfitters to order a dinner suit. The assistants fight over
measuring her up and decide on splitting the work limb by limb. Men lust after
Ossi in groups and make horribly obvious play of their intentions: are you
watching Sydney James? But Ossi’s now complicit Babs Windsor or Liz Fraser, she’s
not going to take it.
Kitted up in starched collar, bow tie, top hat and tails,
Ossi sets off to have fun at the dance hall, catching the eye of several young
women as she takes her pretty-boy swagger to the dance. Then she chances across
someone familiar: Herr Brockmüller. Jealously, she tries to attract away
Brockmüller’s favoured escort and as he rushes to confront the impudent
challenge of this young man, turns to find his target already lost to another
man. Women eh? Butterfly minds and unreliable… He takes solace in his new
acquaintance who, it transpires, is an excellent drinking buddy.
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| Boys who like boys who are girls etc |
It’s a long night and by the time the two fall out onto
the pavement, it’s the morning and they’re struggling to think or walk
straight, putting on each other's overcoats which happen to include their address
cards. Confused by the cards, their driver takes them to each other’s houses
but not before some curious drunken smooching. Cheekily subversive. the kissing
has the audience running through the permutations: Ossi knows what she’s doing
but Herr Brockmüller is clearly a man of broad tastes… she knows but he doesn’t.
Lubitsch clearly delight in this transgressive confusion
and the iconoclastic Ossi who was far more that a fashionably strong woman
trying to find a new level in a society robbed of so many men. In Germany as
elsewhere, the War left an opportunity for gender equality and Ossi was here to
grab that chance with both hands either in a suit or in a dress… for the
continuation of the film’s title is clearly: I want to be a woman!
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| Herr Lubitsch |
Both films are available as part of the priceless Lubitsch
in Berlin DVD box set from Masters of Cinema/Eureka but seeing them on
screen is, of course, the best way to really meet Ossi!
The BFI’s Weimar Cinema season has another week to run so
check out the remaining goodies: how to follow all this?!
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