I think part of the why Trouble in Paradise doesn’t seem like the typical screwball comedy to me at first is because of its slower pace. I expect and even want the dialogue to be as quick as Hildy and Walter’s exchanges in His Girl Friday, but it’s more even paced instead. This might be because the screwball comedy was still in its early stages. The Hays code is what really forced the genre to evolve into what we know it to be. And so, the dialogue seems quieter, the film not so much screwbally, characters aren’t that eccentric. But I digress.
In an article from the New York Observer that Peter Bogdanovich wrote, I read how Ernst Lubitsch didn’t want to open the scene with a typical view of Venice. He wasn’t going to go forward until he found the right opening. He ended up with the Italian man collecting trash and putting it on the gondola and moving on while singing passionately at the top of his voice. This opening put me off the very first time I watched it. In hindsight I see its importance in setting the mood since what proceeds is a view from a hotel room with an unconscious man on the floor and in the shadows another man fleeing from the balcony. If you were to begin the film with typical night scenes of Venice and then the hotel room, you might think the film to be thriller. I don’t believe you would know it’s a comedy unless you had read a brief synopsis. So Lubitsch is setting the mood here, this is a comedy and you’re going to have to deal with trash. Because, it’s kind of trashy, people so obsessed with getting money or simply wasting money away. In fact, it’s down right comical, which is what the film ends up showing.
There’s a hint from the beginning about Gaston not really being a Baron. There’s a leaf on his jacket which the waiter finds. How did it get there? What could he have been doing to end up with a leaf on himself? And why didn’t he even notice it? Wouldn’t he have brushed away any lingering lints by this point? Or, the question I wondered upon first viewing, was he the one in the shadows in the balcony of the hotel room?
Herbert Marshall is completely charming and I can never get over that when I see him in this performance. He delivers his lines in both charming and laughable ways. You know he’s full of it, but you can’t help but smile every time.
Now, Miriam Hopkins is hilarious as Lily. Especially in this scene as she overacts. She’s so good at performing badly if that makes any sense. She has a great sense of comedic timing, which is most true when she flashes one of her faces.
The phone call with Lily’s roommate always bothers me because it kind of depresses me. It brings me down to reality and to be honest I wish it had been done differently. Sure, at this point we realize Lily’s not the Countess, but it just looks so drab and real and all I could think of was how depressing Lily’s real life really is. The roommate is depressing and in a screwball comedy there should be no depression! That’s why we’re there watching!
There are the Italians. Now, I don’t know any Italian, but I can understand some words. And I wondered, and I always wonder this every time I see it, whether or not they really are speaking Italian. I think I ask myself this because here we do see that fast-talking that I’ve come to associate with the genre and it just seems so comical that I wonder if it really is the real thing.
Finally, as Lily and Gaston are beginning to uncover the truth of who the other really is, Gaston stands up from the table and goes over to the door and locks them both in. We know Lily has taken the wallet and the accompanying music sounds a bit menacing. The tension builds as Gaston approaches Lily and then he forces her to stand and shakes her silly until the wallet falls to the ground. He proceeds to pick it up and puts it away in his jacket, and the two continue with their dinner. At this point, if you didn’t know what kind of film this would be, surely you should know by now. And a thriller it is not.
Some of the lines I like in this scene, “I want to see that moon in the champagne. … and as for you waiter … I don’t want to see you at all,” and also, “Baron, I shouldn’t have come,” which neither sound nearly as funny now that I’ve written them down, but really it’s the delivery of them from Marshall and Hopkins that make them funny.
I think the most important thing to take away from this scene when considering the screwball comedy is not just the dialogue but the setting of tone. I appreciate that Lubitsch didn’t want to go on without setting the right mood. He didn’t want to trick you into thinking this was a romantic thriller of sorts. This scene is about the ridiculousness of two thieves stealing from each other and falling in love in the process. And if you really think about it, that’s pretty screwball.
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