SF State professor hosts screening of Lubitsch’s 1932 ‘Trouble in Paradise’
Ernst Lubitsch’s characters were the coolest people in the room, and if you were in Depression-era America — and you were a steelworker, lawyer, stay-at-home mom, dishwasher or whatever — you felt that way too when you saw his films.
The German-born director, who was drawn like a magnet to Hollywood in the early silent era, became the world’s expert in smooth sophistication, known as “the Lubitsch touch.” He was a master at the kind of escapism that helped define Tinseltown.