Disc Reviews

Madame Dubarry Review

• 22nd Sep 2014

Made in 1919 during a period when legendry director Ernst Lubitsch was making a series of big scale history films (others included Anne Boleyn and Sumurun, both 1920) but what all these films lack is what became known as the ‘Lubitsch touch’, that subtle and sly sense of cheeky fun that was honed and perfected in his Hollywood films where he worked from 1923 through to his last film in 1948. However, in Madame Dubarry some of this is evident, particularly through the clear working chemistry that Lubitsch and his then regular silent star Pola Negri have. The story drifts from frivolous melodrama to heavy drama by the films end. The plot is loosely based off that of the real life Madame Dubarry, mistress to King Louis XV in pre-revolutionary France and is in her early days a milliner girl called Jeanne Veaubernier. Needless to say the plot plays fast and loose with historic fact. Jeanne begins by flirting and conducting affairs with a series of aristocrats until she climbs the social ladder so high she can’t climb any further – namely with the King (played by legendry silent German actor, Emil Jannings). This is not unrelated to the state of affairs in Germany at the time. Humiliated by war and torn apart by revolution in 1919 between the old order and the emerging far right with communists on the left a story centred on the French Revolution would have resonated with a German audience. The affair between the two starts off as very frivolous and flirty – best played out when the King tries to stuff a scroll down the front of Jeanne’s dress will trying to take a cheeky peak at her breasts. Needless to say the stuffing of a scroll also has some very strong Freudian suggestions. To make Jeanne respectable he marries her off to a Count DuBarry giving her some respectability while enabling him to carry on pursuing his affair with her while now having the title Madame Dubarry in full view of the court.

Meanwhile, Jeanne has an earlier beau who is imprisoned in the Bastille. When she learns that he is to be executed she pleads with the King for him to be freed. In time the friend, Armand de Foix sees Jeanne for what she really is and comes to be disgusted by her. In the rest of France Madame Dubarry is hated and see her as symptomatic of all that is wrong with the Ancien Regime. Following the King’s dramatic death King Louis XVI becomes King, but he does not appear to be King for long before the French people rise up culminating in the revolution and of course the beheading of the monarchy and the aristocracy. No mention here of Marie Antoinette though, an equally despised by member of the Bourbon court.

Previously Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series had released a 6 film box set entitled ‘Lubitsch in Berlin’ which did not include this film which gives the set a companion piece. Similar in style to the others, Madame Dubarry is lavish to look at, even if the sets and locations look more German Rococo rather than French. A mere detail but gives a clear German look to Lubitsch’s film. Conversely when making films in Hollywood he was able to bring a distinct Europeaness to his films few other directors, including émigrés were able to do. Yet despite its heavy ending and frivolous beginning the film is fairly heavy going in places but works better than it had previously thanks to the wonderful restoration work carried out by the F.W. Murnau Stiftung who had carried out many previous restorations to the great German classics of the silent period.

The only other extra, apart from the usually wonderful 36 page booklet written by Eureka! regular David Cairns is the short film from 1916, both directed by and starring Lubitsch, Als Ich Tot War (When I Was Dead) in which Lubitsch tried to show, and fails his slapstick talents. This is really only significant as being the earliest surviving film from the director. Madame Dubarry is perhaps best known as a forerunner to the amazing career that lay ahead for the future émigré director. His German films are not of the standard or quality of his Hollywood films, particularly from The Marriage Circle (1924) on with Trouble in Paradise (1932) (also released by Eureka!) being his best and a later career that included Ninotchka (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). In each case Lubitsch not only supplied his famed touch to the films, but gave a wonderful European element of cheek and style missing from many Hollywood films whereas Madame Dubarry is mostly melodrama. To dismiss this as merely melodrama is perhaps a little disingenuous as the film does display a brutal ending with the (surviving) final frames showing the decapitated head of Bovary with the intention of being both shocking and to illicit our sympathy.

Chris Hick