There is a surreal playfulness to this farce, the last of director Ernst Lubitsch's German comedies, but it failed to completely win me over. There is just not enough humor or plot development to it, and at least for me, it doesn't seem to have aged all that well.
There are some clever moments and scenes that do make it worth watching, however, and I liked its gentle subversiveness. An example of this comes during the first scene, when a playboy lieutenant (Paul Heidemann) is being exiled to an isolated outpost, and a big crowd of children all wave and say 'Bye Daddy!' Another comes when we first meet the daughter of a band of robbers near the outpost (Pola Negri); in that scene, she's dishing out some punishment to a couple of the men by giving them a whip on their behinds. Perversely, they smile and return for more, which I was a little surprised to see and had me chuckling. Of course the two are destined to meet, and despite having little apparent chemistry, fall for one another. The captain of the fortress (Victor Jansen), meanwhile, wants the new guy to marry his daughter (Edith Meller), after he proves himself in a battle with the robbers.
Unfortunately the humor in most of that sequence involves people just running around, which is a weakness throughout the film, and perhaps at the heart of the matter for me. There is a nice moment when some of the robbers dramatically feign being shot, and then get up to surprise the soldiers. It's tough for me to think of other moments which were truly funny, and it's hard to fathom this being on some reviewer's lists of top all-time comedies. Everyone's taste is of course different though.
More interesting for me were the artistic touches, starting with Lubitsch's experimentation in post-production, using all sorts of cutouts (circles, diagonal bands, rectangles with scalloped edges, a pair of jaws, etc) to add to a feeling that is almost a storybook set of absurd vignettes. The interior of the fortress has some fantastic curved surfaces, seeming to blend Expressionism and Art Deco. Lastly, there is a cool dream sequence in the final act, which features a transparent effect, and a bizarre band of musicians who appear to be Stay Puft Marshmellow men, 1921-style (actually snowmen).
Not an awful film, but not one I'd recommend to anyone other than a true silent film buff, or Lubitsch aficionado.
There are some clever moments and scenes that do make it worth watching, however, and I liked its gentle subversiveness. An example of this comes during the first scene, when a playboy lieutenant (Paul Heidemann) is being exiled to an isolated outpost, and a big crowd of children all wave and say 'Bye Daddy!' Another comes when we first meet the daughter of a band of robbers near the outpost (Pola Negri); in that scene, she's dishing out some punishment to a couple of the men by giving them a whip on their behinds. Perversely, they smile and return for more, which I was a little surprised to see and had me chuckling. Of course the two are destined to meet, and despite having little apparent chemistry, fall for one another. The captain of the fortress (Victor Jansen), meanwhile, wants the new guy to marry his daughter (Edith Meller), after he proves himself in a battle with the robbers.
Unfortunately the humor in most of that sequence involves people just running around, which is a weakness throughout the film, and perhaps at the heart of the matter for me. There is a nice moment when some of the robbers dramatically feign being shot, and then get up to surprise the soldiers. It's tough for me to think of other moments which were truly funny, and it's hard to fathom this being on some reviewer's lists of top all-time comedies. Everyone's taste is of course different though.
More interesting for me were the artistic touches, starting with Lubitsch's experimentation in post-production, using all sorts of cutouts (circles, diagonal bands, rectangles with scalloped edges, a pair of jaws, etc) to add to a feeling that is almost a storybook set of absurd vignettes. The interior of the fortress has some fantastic curved surfaces, seeming to blend Expressionism and Art Deco. Lastly, there is a cool dream sequence in the final act, which features a transparent effect, and a bizarre band of musicians who appear to be Stay Puft Marshmellow men, 1921-style (actually snowmen).
Not an awful film, but not one I'd recommend to anyone other than a true silent film buff, or Lubitsch aficionado.