The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

 Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Smiling Lieutenant”

Thematic Elements: 

Lubitsch’s ‘The Smiling Lieutenant’ is about a man named Niki who falls in love with a violinist only to be trapped in a relationship with a royal princess. Niki’s attraction to the low-level violinist and his rejection of the wealthy aristocratic princess is the central conflict of the film. This central conflict stems from his comfortability and complete understanding of Franzi, the violinist and his complete lack of understanding and miscommunication with Anna, the princess. When Niki and Franzi first see each other, he smiles and winks at her – which she is in complete understanding of what this action means, and her smile back reciprocates that understand. The two of them hit it off and are in complete harmony with each other, both being able to play music together, both in total synchronicity. When Anna first sees Niki on the other hand, she misunderstands his smiling and winking as a form of mockery (he is not even smiling and winking at her to being with, but rather he is focused on Franzi). Franzi’s understanding of Niki’s smile and Anna’s complete lack of understanding for the same smile is the entire crux of the film. Princess Anna claims she doesn’t know much about life. She doesn’t understand that the lieutenant smiling wasn’t mockery, she doesn’t understand what a wink is, and she doesn’t understand that Niki doesn’t want her. Lubitsch is making a point to how the princess and her father live a very privileged life in which they can have and do anything they desire, and it is this that causes the misunderstandings of the film. The royal family’s lack of grounded-ness makes it hard for them to understand and be on the same page with the other characters. Throughout the film, Niki tries to evade being trapped by Anna’s affections, but her constant misunderstanding of the situations causes her to draw him in more and causes him to become more disgruntled. By the end of the film, Franzi recognizes Anna’s lack of social understanding and teaches her how to be a more ‘down to earth’ person. While Anna plays very uptight classical music, Franzi teachers her something more contemporary and playful. Franzi also changes all of Anna’s attire and clothing to make her more sexy and less uptight, also burning her hoity toity underwear in exchange for a more revealing sort of underwear to woo Niki. Frazni teaches Anna how to be more desirable for Niki but she is also teaching her how to be a more relatable person, someone who could relate to her fellow individuals – rather than be someone who cannot relate to anyone because of her royalty status. Once Anna reveals these newfound changes to Niki, he sees her as someone who is more like Franzi, someone not separated by class and wealth from him and is in congruency with more humanistic sensibilities. Her royalty and status had given her everything materialistic she wanted in life, but it was her connection to more sensible style of social normality that gives her both a higher level of connection and understanding with her fellow man, as well as the man she desires in Niki. 

Camerawork: 

Lubitsch utilizes the ‘show, don’t tell’ method of storytelling, mastering the art of showing the audience the necessary information, like in the beginning when the tailor comes to collect payment from Niki. Rather than telling us this, he shows us the man holding a bill with various military clothing and prices listed with a Shakespeare quote at the bottom, “If you don’t pay your tailor in the summer, you’ll be cold in the winter”. Niki’s refusal to answer the door for him but his acceptance to answer when a nice-looking woman shows up shows us that Niki does not have the luxury to pay for his expensive military attire and would rather not deal with it. Lubitsch’s ‘show, don’t tell’ method contrasts with the misunderstandings between the characters, as the audience is fully aware of every intention and every piece of understanding, whereas the princess and her father are not. This makes the disconnection between us (the regular folk) and the royal family that much more noticeable and real. These high-profile royal people are not able to understand the basic identifications of human social relations and subtleties like we the audience are. Lubitsch shoots the scenes of the palace as large open spaces directly in contrast with the more familiar and intimate locations elsewhere. This causes the palace to feel more like an alien world, unfamiliar to our own which hints at the distance between us and the people living there. Lubitsch uses a lot of push ins – showing us a scene taking place only to push in closer to what’s happening. This can cause the audience to inadvertently ‘push in’ the attention and focus more on what’s happening in the interpersonal relationships of the frame, rather than the what’s happening outside of the frame of the characters. Lubitsch utilizes these methods of storytelling to tell us more about what is happening socially between the characters than what is actually being said. 

Best Shot: 

One of the best (couple of) shots in the film happens when Niki throws the checkerboard onto the bed. After Anna finally becomes a relatable person to Niki, he ultimately decides to pursue her, which was her desire for most of the film. Once he tries to kiss her, she stops him by holding a checkerboard between them. This is a call back to when she tried to pursue him on their wedding night only for Niki to tell her that married couples do not do that on their wedding night, which she believed. After he tells her this and leaves, her father comes in with a checkerboard wanting to play checkers with her to which she responds that she does not want to play. So, the checkerboard she puts between them as he tries to pursue her now represents the original lack of understanding and separation that has been between them during their marriage. He keeps taking the checkerboard and throwing it across the room only for her to chase it down and keep it between them. He finally picks it up and throws it on the bed, both Anna and us the audience knowing what he means by throwing it on the bed. All of the characters are now on the same page, Anna and Niki are both compatibly in-sync and Lubitsch’s brilliant use of ‘show, don’t tell’ puts us the audience in sync with them.