Die Austernprinzessin, Ernst Lubitsch, Duitsland 1917

I don't find it easy to watch films in the context of their time or their place in the history of filmmaking in a particular country. What I want is emotion, to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and carried along. The ultimate "suspension of disbelief", so to speak. Besides that, I find it fascinating to read clever texts about films or directors or movements etc. But these texts, although they may help me see things I had not noticed before, only rarely change the emotional impact the film had on me in the first place. To give an example: I have read that Dziga Vertov was doing something completely new when he put his camera somewhere in a street in Russia and recorded what was happening in front of the lens. I can appreciate that intellectually, find it most interesting, but when I watch a KinoPravda film like "Man with a Movie Camera", I am not riveted to the screen during the film. I can see a lot of the techniques the film uses, but, frankly, the film doesn't do anything for me emotionally. "Die Austernprinzessin" is also a case in point. It's an early film by Lubitsch who went on to make fast moving comedies in the U.S.A. later. "Die Austernprinzessin" must have been a very funny film when it was first released in 1919. But I carry my own history of film watching. And that influences my response. Having said that, there are scenes that still work well for me: the outbreak of the foxtrot epidemic is still funny. So are the oystertycoon's daughter's words when her father has promised her a prince for a husband. I wasn't bored during the 60 minutes that the film lasted, but I feel that the passage of time has not been kind to a film like this and that I cannot relate to the general atmosphere of the film which Lubitsch no doubt intended. This is, in the case of "Die Austernprinzessin", due to the emphatic acting. I feel that the degree of histrionic expression in silent films varies from film to film, or director to director. In my experience the silent films of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd have aged more gracefully. Could it be that there are more close ups in Lubitsch´ film and actors/directors like Lubitsch regarded making films too much like making theatre? The close ups are, frankly, embarrassing. They spoil the speed of the action.