But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct by Ken Kwapis

Author:Ken Kwapis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

THE OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE, OR WHAT WOULD LUBITSCH DO?

In Cameron Crowe’s book-length interview with writer-director Billy Wilder, Wilder recounts a breakthrough during the writing of Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka. His story perfectly illustrates that oft-used but little-understood phrase the Lubitsch touch. The title character, played by Greta Garbo, has a clearly defined emotional arc. At the start of the story, she’s a coldhearted Stalinist apparatchik, in Paris to pawn off imperial jewelry seized during the 1917 revolution. By the end, she has fallen in love with an aristocrat (Melvyn Douglas) and been seduced by the allure of Western capitalism. Lubitsch felt the romantic story line with the aristocrat was working well, but he was eager to find a way to visually represent Ninotchka falling in love with capitalism. As Wilder put it, “We needed a “thing [my emphasis] to prove … that she fell under the spell of capitalism.” Wilder and Charles Brackett, his writing partner, pitched umpteen ideas to Lubitsch, all of which he rejected. They kept racking their brains until Lubitsch came bounding into their office one morning. Beaming, Lubitsch exclaimed, “It’s the hat!”

Wilder continues the story:

And we said, “What hat?” He said, “We build the hat into the beginning!” Brackett and I looked at each other—this is Lubitsch. The story of the hat has three acts. Ninotchka first sees it in a shop window as she enters the Ritz Hotel with her three Bolshevik accomplices. This absolutely crazy hat is the symbol of capitalism to her. She gives it a disgusted look and says, “How can a civilization survive which allows women to wear this on their heads?” Then the second time she goes by the hat and makes a noise—tch-tch-tch. The third time, she is finally alone, she has gotten rid of her Bolshevik accomplices, opens a drawer and pulls it out. And now she wears it. Working with Lubitsch, ideas like this were in the air.

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