Word: lubitsch
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...when sound was new and unmanageable, and spoken words thumped dead on the ear, there were a few directors who saw the new dimension to pictures as something more than just a way to hear subtitles. The great pioneer who weaved sound and image together was the legendary Ernst Lubitsch. Not so legendary now, but quite the early virtuoso was Rouben Mamoulian. Mamoulian seemed to be experimenting constantly. His most accepted successes were on the stage (he directed the original stage version of "Porgy and Bess" for example) but his pictures exude a creative excitement that seems...
...happen to sing and dance because they feel like it." But this film has neither the substance nor the charm to subsidize that kind of indulgence. A plot it's not got; that would be all right if someone could sing or dance or the images were interesting. Ernst Lubitsch made some of the most marvellous musicals of the thirties with no plot--the films just flowed along. Fred Astaire's movies didn't have to do much at all except display the man who defied all physical laws. But Bogdanovich has succeeded in no corner, and yet acknowledges them...
...material. His props were inflections, pauses and reactions. In his mouth, "Well!" could express a thesaurus of repartee; a Benny "Yipe!" could wring laughter from a stone. Benny might have enjoyed a film career as durable as Bob Hope's. As the Polish ham in Ernst Lubitsch's wartime comedy, To Be or Not to Be, the comedian gave one of the screen's classic performances. Indeed, British Actor Alec McCowen, whose humorous timing derives from Benny's, called the old pro "one of the greatest comedic actors in the world...
...skittish and well observed. Bogdanovich, a hugely eclectic director, borrows heavily here again. The use of a popular tune-Maggie, in this instance-as a sort of sentimental signature comes directly from John Ford, and the mood of much of the light-comedy moments seems a gloss on Ernst Lubitsch. The film's opening is quite ravishing, however-the early moments of a hotel stirring for a new day-and throughout there is a kind of stylistic steadiness new to Bogdanovich...
...young critic, Bogdanovich paid lavish tribute to such American masters as John Ford and Howard Hawks. But the harder Bogdanovich strains after emulation, the more it eludes him. Paper Moon has less relation to the kind of personal expression he so admired in Ford, Hawks, Welles and Lubitsch than to the sort of glossy, empty big-studio product he used to despise...