So This Is Paris (1926 Ernst Lubitsch)

Bouncy, funny, distinctly Lubitsch (jokes on threes, mad misunderstandings), made for Warner Brothers. Hasn't lost any of its charm and the performances are particularly good in the dry, slow-burning double take kind of style.

Film opens with a very funny André Beranger performing the Dance of Despair. Then he fails to manage to lift up his wife Lilyan Tashman, so she lifts him up. (Their maid is Myrna Loy! - but of course that was rather difficult to make out in this copy.) Meanwhile in the apartment opposite Patsy Ruth Miller spots the dancer and thinks he's an Arabian prince. Her husband Monte Blue arrives, kisses her, and takes her temperature. Then he sees what appears to be a naked man opposite (he's just taken his turban off) so he goes over to have a word - only to find the apartment also contains old flame Tashman. They go all gooey, then he spots the dancer and realises what's going on - but instead of reporting all this to his wife, he tells her he's sorted him. 'Where's your cane?' she says. 'Oh, I smashed it up on him.' Next, the dancer comes over to return the cane, attempting to pick up the wife while her husband's in the next room...

And so in this way the sex comedy plays out - Blue has to spend three days in jail but goes dancing with Tashman instead - where follows an incredibly edited montage of mad twenties dancing (Charleston, apparently).  Also great trick scene where the cane is floating over sleeping Blue, prodding him.

Loved the ending, where Miller takes drunken Blue home, then he starts saying to her 'How dare you come in so late!' Then she (literally) reduces him to pint size. Very entertaining.

Based on French play by Mailhac and Hale'vy, written by Hans Kraely, shot by John Mescall, sadly available in very poor print only. This photo is courtesy the BFI:

Lubitsch had made dozens of films before this, from 1914 on.