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ReFocus: The International Directors Series

ReFocus: The Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch

Edited by David John Boyd

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£100.00

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About this book

Explores German-American filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch’s engagement with and expressions of historicity throughout his career

  • Analyses Lubitsch’s historical cinema from his Berlin silent epics to his Hollywood comic classics in relationship with ongoing debates in film history, film studies, film-philosophy, world cinema and historical studies
  • Considers the impact of Lubitsch’s historical oeuvre in philosophical, textual, and cultural contexts, with a focus on the spatial, performative and sensorial readings of his accessible, satirical and playful historical stylings
  • Connects Lubitsch to relevant political and cultural events and institutions, specifically noting Lubitsch’s relevance during our contemporary moment marked by the global rise of fascism, as well as a public return of Nazism and populist antisemitism across the world

ReFocus: The Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch responds to and reframes the films of German émigré director Ernst Lubitsch as film-philosophical exemplars of both early world cinema and historical cinema, from his silent era costume dramas to his post-war Hollywood romances. This edited collection examines recent Lubitsch scholarship within the context of transcultural and transhistorical film theory to provide a critical retrospective of Lubitsch’s costume films, historical epics, and marriage comedies across his three illustrious decades of international success.

Reviews

Like adjusting the lens on a projector, this volume brings Lubitsch’s films into sharper focus, revealing new dimensions. The authors convincingly refocus our vision of Lubitsch’s humanizing touch with fresh insights and diverse approaches that illuminate the global impact of his style and demonstrate why his historical films continue to reward close analysis long after their initial flicker.
This rich, theoretically ambitious volume explores the relationship between history (social and film history) and Lubitsch’s films of both the German and the American periods. The emphasis on the tactile in Lubitsch is especially original and promising. The authors collected here bring diverse, multinational perspectives to the volume.
This collection of essays steps back from the scholarly framework of the ‘LubitschTouch’ and provides new methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding how, why, and for whom, Lubitsch deploys historiography in his costume dramas, operettas, and comedies.
Table of contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Ernst Lubitsch’s Touch of the Past - David John Boyd

Part I. Lubitsch’s Costume Films: From Berlin to Hollywood (1914–27)

1. Eyeing Egypt: Transparent Orientalism on the Edge of Cinematic Modernity in The Eyes of Mummy Ma (1918) - Christina Parker-Flynn

2. Longing for Visual Attraction: Fashion and Fabrics as Sensual Quality in the Early Films of Ernst Lubitsch - Evelyn Echle

3. The Woven World-Image: Lubitsch, Deleuze and the Film-Philosophies of
Fabric - David John Boyd

4. ‘The Lubitsch Touch' under National Socialism: Lubitsch’s Early Historicals and Their Influence on Nazi Film Aesthetics - Mina Radović

5. ‘Do You Know That You Two Are Married to Each Other?’: The Oyster Princess and The Doll (1919) as Farces of Sex and Class - Ciara Moloney

6. Carnival, Spectatorship and Desire in Rosita (1923) - Irene Rihuete Varea

Part II. Lubitsch’s Pre-Code Imaginary (1928–33)

7. Lubitsch’s ‘Hidden Jewish Touch’: Jewish Anxieties and Gallic Desires - Craig Svonkin

8. ‘This Is Real!’: Money in Trouble in Paradise (1932) - Kyle Stine

Part III. Lubitsch’s Émigré Hollywood (1934–48)

9. The Earnest Turn in Ernst’s Historiography - Amin Heidari

10. Pariah Humour: Ernst Lubitsch’s Refugee Comedies - Fabrizio S. Ciccone

11. Fighting Fascism: Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942) - Jan-Christopher Horak

12. Ernst Lubitsch in Dialogue with History - Margie Burns

13. History and/as Genre in the Work of Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch - Matthew Williamson

14. Remaking Lubitsch in Hong Kong Cinema: The Ninotchka Trope in Her Fatal
Ways (1991) - Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

Index

About the author

David John Boyd

David John Boyd is a post-doctoral research fellow of the Stirling Maxwell Centre in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses include historical representation in film, film-philosophies of embodiment, and theories of intermediality and adaptation in global visual culture. His recent publications include From Glasgow to Gotham: The Comics Art of Frank Quitely with Julie Briand-Boyd (forthcoming 2025) and Deleuze and Global Animation: Estranged Images (forthcoming 2026).

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