Screening
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in partnership with the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA.
Visit the UCLA Film & Television Archive website(opens in a new tab) to learn more about upcoming screenings and events.
Free admission. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
In person: Introductions and pre-screening conversation with author and film historian Howard Gutner and Deborah Nadoolman Landis, founding director and chair of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA.
Archive Talks pairs leading historians and scholars with screenings of the moving image media that is the focus of their writing and research. Each program will begin with a special talk by the invited scholar that will introduce audiences to new insights, interpretations and contexts for the films and media being screened.
This screening will be preceded by a book signing of Banton of Paramount: Haute Couture in Hollywood’s Golden Age with author Howard Gutner beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the lobby.
Trouble in Paradise
Year: 1932 Country: U.S. Language: English Runtime: 81 min. 35mm. B&W.
The playboy and thief Gaston (Herbert Marshall) meets the expert pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins) on the Riviera, and they, of course, fall in love. In Paris, Gaston gets a job as the personal secretary to a wealthy heiress to a perfume company, Mariette (Kay Francis), hiring Lily as the maid, so they can rob her blind. Unfortunately, while cleaning up the corruption on her company’s board, he also falls in love with her. No director was better at exposing the false morality of the bourgeoisie when pursuing sexual desire. Here, Ernst Lubitsch sets up a faux marriage, then turns the relationship into a ménage à trois, which he provocatively suggests may be the best way to keep a sexual relationship interesting and stable. Lubitsch’s direction of actors is almost Pirandellian, with the actors speaking their emotional lines in a virtual monotone, thus creating parodies of romantic love.
On display in this luscious pre-code comedic romance is the creative genius of Travis Banton, one of Hollywood’s most important costume designers, whose collaborators included Lubitsch, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg. A conversation on Banton’s influence and evocative style, with author Howard Gutner and Professor Deborah Nadoolman Landis, will precede the screening.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Screenwriter: Samson Raphaelson. With: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles.
Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation from the 35mm nitrate studio print and a 35mm acetate dupe negative. Laboratory services by Fotokem, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, Inc., Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to Library of Congress, George Willeman, British Film Institute, Universal Pictures.
