‘A Touch of Lubitsch’ at Sag Harbor Cinema

Sag Harbor Cinema will present “A Touch of Lubitsch” featuring seven classic comedies from the German-born director’s extensive filmography running from Friday, March 28, through Thursday, April 3. Lubitsch, an enduring titan of silent cinema in his own country, was one of Hollywood’s most successful European imports, garnering an almost unsurpassed reputation for his sophisticated comedies of manners, as well as his musicals, and whose patented “Lubitsch touch” has inspired generations of filmmakers striving for his level of sharp wit and shrewd storytelling. He brought to the American screen, films with sophistication, wit, sexual irreverence and artistry that became the renowned “Lubitsch Touch.”

“Venice, Paris, London, Budapest, Warsaw … I wanted this small selection of Lubitsch’s’ ’30s and ’40s comedies to have the flavor of a ‘Grand Tour’; to reflect how Lubitsch had recreated in Hollywood a fantasy version of the world he had left behind,” explained Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the cinema’s artistic director. “The success of our Douglas Sirk program two years ago made me want to further explore the wildly creative contribution that the European diaspora, between WWI and WWII, brought to American Cinema.

“To this day, Lubitsch remains revered among his peers. Jean Renoir went as far as declaring that ‘Lubitsch invented the modern Hollywood.’”

Born into a Russian-Jewish family in Berlin, Lubitsch entered Max Reinhardt’s Deutches Theatre in 1911 at age19, appearing in dozens of films before moving into directing and making his first big mark with “Die Augen der Mumie Ma” (The Eyes of the Mummy, 1918). Lubitsch’s international reputation quickly grew, eventually securing American distribution for films like “Madame Du Barry” (1919) and “Anna Boleyn” (1920). Contracted by Mary Pickford, he relocated to Hollywood in 1922 to direct the powerful star in “Rosita.” He swiftly became one of the most prolific and sought after filmmakers — working with WarnerBros, MGM and Paramount — and moved into sound films in 1929 with “The Love Parade,” followed by “Monte Carlo” (1930) and “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931), which were all sensations of the new wave of musicals.

Lubitsch’s next film, the precode “Trouble in Paradise” (1932), will kick off “A Touch of Lubitsch” at Sag Harbor Cinema on Friday, March 28. The romantic comedy stars Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins as lovers/thieves conspiring to scam the head of a famous perfume company played by Kay Francis.

Also part of the series are the Billy Wilder-written “Ninotchka” (1939) — with Greta Garbo as a Soviet emissary in Paris tasked with the sale of jewels seized from Russian aristocrats — and “Design for Living” (1933), adapted from a Noël Coward play, a love triangle set against the backdrop of Bohemian Paris, starring Miriam Hopkins, Frederic March, and Gary Cooper.

Just one week after the screening of “The Mortal Storm” (on March 22) Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan will be back on the cinema’s screens with one of Lubitsch’s masterpieces “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), a workplace romance set in Budapest, based on Miklós László’s 1937 play “Parfumerie,” whose brilliance was replicated for decades — from Buster Keaton’s “In the Good Old Summertime” (1949) to Nora Ephron’s “You’ve Got Mail” (1998).

Hitler’s Germany is the target of Lubitsch’s subversive political satire “To Be or Not To Be” (1942), starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as husband-and-wife thespians in Nazi-occupied Poland who become embroiled in a plot to track down a German spy. Released just three years after Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the film proved controversial at the time for its daring humor. It has since been recognized as one of Hollywood’s sharpest satirical takes on the Nazi regime, on par with Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940).

An inspiration for Peter Bogdanovich’s last feature, “Squirrels to the Nuts” (2014), Lubitsch’s final film (aside from “That Lady in Ermine,” completed by Otto Preminger after Lubitsch’s death mid-production) “Cluny Brown” (1946) offers a zany social commentary through the eyes of Jennifer Jones as a parlor maid sent to a stuffy English manor who, along with a Czech political refugee (Charles Boyer), turns the household upside down.

“A Touch of Lubitsch” will close with a new restoration of “Heaven Can Wait” (1943), a supernatural comedy in beautiful Technicolor with Don Ameche negotiating his entrance into Hell after a lifetime of philandering, notwithstanding his love for wife Gene Tierney. Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, “Heaven Can Wait” showcases Lubitsch’s distinctive and unparalleled (though much imitated) irreverent wit.

For Alfred Hitchcock, writer-director Ernst Lubitsch was “a man of pure cinema.” For Orson Welles, he was a “giant” whose “talent and originality were stupefying.” François Truffaut wrote, “What cannot be learned or bought is the charm and mischievousness … of Lubitsch, which truly made him a prince.” For Martin Scorsese, “Everything in a Lubitsch film counts: every gesture, every word, every design choice for every set, every angle, every second.”

“Ernst Lubitsch could do more with a closed door than most of today’s directors can do with an open fly,” said Billy Wilder, Lubitsch’s longtime devotee who famously had a sign in his office that said “How would Lubitsch do it?” When Lubitsch passed away in 1947 at age 55, Wilder said “No more Lubitsch,” to which William Wyler responded, “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.”

“A Touch of Lubitsch” runs March 28 to April 3, with each of the seven films playing twice. Tickets are available individually or as “The Grand Tour” pass which is $55 ($30 for members) and it permits guests to attend each film one time. For the full lineup visit sagharborcinema.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street in Sag Harbor.