Somewhere a student at film school, perhaps the next Scorsese or Spielberg, is studying "the Lubitsch Touch" and they would be exposed to classic movies of Hollywood's Golden Age, directed for Paramount by Ernst Lubitsch. This isn't one of them, but instead a historical comedy from a stage play dating back 100 years or so about Russia's Catherine the Great, and truly seems like an artifact from an ancient time -not 19th Century Russia but rather a quaint type of Hollywood studio product.
Otto Prmeinger erected with his usual precision -no spontaneity but a leter-perfect execution of performances. It takes 15 minutes before the legendary Tallulah Bankhead enters and takes over. Her leading man is William Eythe, a poor man's Tyrone Power, and the ensemble cast is wonderful in delivering their lines, though the format is musty and difficult to enter for a modern audience (more's the pity).
I've seen all of Preminger's movies and he's worthy of study, as is the organizing principle of the French critics and Andrew Sarris -"the Auteur theory". This movie represents Otto's approach and control over his work, yet of course it is the movie's producer Lubitsch, at the end of his career who dominates its pacing and distinctive comedy style, having personally directed the show before Otto took over and completed the movie.
So dated, it still manages to surprise: in the final reel, Anne Baxter is tearfully complaining to Charles Coburn how she's been exiled to the Crimea. He responds: "But we don't own the Crimea -not yet!". This throwaway line is still topical in 2023 (actually since 2014 of course when Putin invaded Ukraine and confiscated the region). And even after The End, the 20th Century-Fox credit is listed, still with a hyphen that wasn't dropped until the early '80s, and is now just a label owned by once competitor Disney, there'a a tiny ad included to Buy War bonds, this being an early 1945 release.
