Joseph McBride with Nicola Lubitsch: How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Nicola Lubitsch joins film historian Joseph McBride to discuss her father, Ernst, and McBride’s book about him, How Did Lubitsch Do It? The book begins with Lubitsch’s early career in Germany, making low comedy during silent cinema, before heading into Lubitsch’s talkies and high comedy Hollywood masterpieces. An early filmmaker who built new worlds in a new medium, Lubitsch transformed Hollywood into his own mode of expression. He made viewers want to live in his cinema, and he frightened censors, who couldn’t understand him, teaching the audience to diminish the terrible with laughter and good manners.

Photos by Andrew Weilert.