I don’t know much about the “Lubitsch touch” -- I have only a scattered acquaintance with his work -- but if this is it, I like it: a very adult comedy of marriage and morals, tightly stylized to avoid the censor, nothing slapstick about it. His first use of color, apparently, but most effective in setting off the decor of the Fifth Avenue mansion where most of the action takes place, changing over the course of fifty years, and the high Deco-style entryway to hell, where Don Ameche tells the tale of the life that he assumes will send him below. Gene Tierney is the wife he woos and wins repeatedly, despite his stagedoor-Johnny antics. A large cast of familiar faces fills out the cast, and the story is very sturdily constructed, with familial vignettes succeeding every ten years or so with endless parallels and cross-references. The dialogue and situations are humorous but subtle, light and dark at the same time, taking a clear look at sex and vanity, aging and death. This is a worthy resurrection by the Criterion Collection. (1943, dvd, n.) *8-*
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