Reviews

This film drove me crazy with lust for Theresa Russell when I first saw it, and a recent IFC showing brought back that first reaction in a hot flashback.

The scene between Art Garfunkel and Russell on the stairway never fails to make me crazy. But you have to give Russell credit for her candid and powerful performance in this film, a contrast to Garfunkel's not particularly attractive coolness. What you keep wondering watching "Bad Timing," is what the heck Russell sees in him.

Garfunel agonizes over deep existential questions despite his own lust for Russell -- and forgive me for not using the character names, for I'm only talking about their roles, not their reality. At one point, they're on an exotic vacation in a steamy mid-East and he agonizes. "Look at where we are," she tells him, although he remains oblivious. This film makes "An Affair to Remember," and assorted Nora Ephron films look like the pablum they are.

Similarly, in that scene on the stairway, she lifts her skirts and tells him, "This is what you want, isn't it?" Sometimes things are both simpler than we think and more complex at the same time. I'm reminded of Freud's alleged statement that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." We can coat anything with a veneer of verbal paint without seeing the true color of the underlying timber. This movie is about lust and how it sometimes drives us even though we paint it in technicolor rationalizations.

This film gave me an enduring crush on Russell, who married Roeg.

Once, "The Lubitsch Touch," was as well known as Hitchcock's reputation as "The Master of Suspense."

"Trouble in Paradise" is Lubitsch's unqualified masterpiece. This pre-code sophisticated comedy epitomizes the European attitude toward sex in its very first scene between Hebert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins. Marshall reveals he has stole Hopkin's garter without her knowing it and she leaps in his lap. She checks -- at the dinner table no less -- realizes it is gone and with the admiration of one thief for another leaps into his lap. "Darling!" she says. No one has to guess what she has in mind, although it is all done with the wit and brio that the "Lubitsch Touch," refers to.

It's great to have this film readily available and the DVD version includes an informative and enlightening commentary (Marshall only had one leg and his lurching walk made a certain speedy cutting necessary that helps give the film it's light, speedy quality).

Lubitsch also made "Shop Around the Corner," remade by Nora Ephron as "You've Got Mail," and "Ninotcha," with Greta Garbo. His musicals with Maurice Chevalier and Jenette MacDonald, such as "The Merry Widow," are also worth seeking out.