Auteur Study: Lubitsch and Wilder

This seminar analyzes the tension in Hollywood between industry self-censorship of film (roughly 1929-1965) and the European émigrés who brought a more cosmopolitan, sexually modern perspective to the genre of comedy.  Students will be introduced to the history of Hollywood’s Production Code (popularly known as the Hays Code), which institutionalized self-administered censorship.  In addition, students will study the genre of comedy, where we often discover implicit subversion of the censorship code. 

The course will teach students about the change in the industry brought about by new talent from Europe during the classical Hollywood period.  In particular, students will study the biographies and work of two directors, the Austrian/German émigrés Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, whose separate careers bracket the beginning and end of the censorship code.  In the 1920s, as Hollywood moved towards a codified censorship code, Ernst Lubitsch developed his infamous “Lubitsch touch,” which subverted the Hays Code by hinting at possible sexual indiscretions through verbal and visual double entendres and other aesthetic strategies. Many producers and directors learned how to subvert the code from Lubitsch’s films; like Lubitsch, while emphatically publicizing their belief in and rigid practice of self-censorship, these producers and directors used Lubitsch-like techniques to hint at salacious attitudes and behaviors, which they had claimed to have censored.

Billy Wilder was one of these directors.  Wilder learned from Lubitsch directly, working as screenwriter on Lubitsch’s films Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) and Ninotchka (1939).  With a handful of other Hollywood personnel, Billy Wilder is credited with directly challenging and bringing the Hays Code to an end, particularly with his film Some Like It Hot (1959).  Wilder moved sexual indiscretions and illicit desire into the open in this film and others such as The Apartment (1960).