The Wildcat: Ernst Lubitsch

For good melodrama to work, the audience has to emphasize with the characters. Ernst Lubitsch's The Wildcat is a wildly inventive romantic comedy that hurts itself by forgetting this important rule. The film follows the romantic entanglements of the occupants of a military border fortress and the eponymous "wildcat," the de facto leader of a group of bandits named Rischka. There is some impress visual gymnastics involved in Lubitsch's lampooning of military life: the foolhardy commander sending out an armed force to defeat the bandits of which around 70% of the troops are musicians, a bandit wedding where the participants treat the proceedings with all of the reserved pomp of a royal ceremony, and the ubiquitous use of outrageous camera masks which seem to lampoon the works of D.W. Griffith. But where the film fails is in its unrepentantly repugnant male lead, Lieutenant Alexis. He impenitently abandons a literal army of bastard children and their mothers to their fates before becoming the toast of the border fortress. Every woman who meets him falls madly in love with him. And here's the kicker: we are never explained why he is so attractive. He never has to woo anybody, either. He just goes about with a smarmy grin as everything falls into his lap. There is no charisma to his character. So when Rischka, an anarchic spirit of liberation, falls so madly in love with him that she desires marriage, we can't help but feel it is unaccountably inexplicable. So the tragic moments where Rischka must abandon her beloved ring hollow. This film apes the mechanics of melodrama without capturing a bit of its pathos. Still, the film's visuals are unique enough to warrant a viewing...and even subsequent admiration.

7/10