That's a funny comedy that takes England as the target of its humor, the England of 1938 and what's more the aristocracy and their twisted class relations with their servants. It is humorous by the way it shows how an Eastern European can easily trap the aristocrats in 1938 with the sound of Prague, some good manners and a little bit of anti-nazism. That Adam Belinski is able to charm these English aristocrats, especially the son who wants to go and fight against Hitler, and his parents who do not even ask a question, or hardly. That Czech refugee is able to live on that noble family for a while before leaving for America along with the maid who arrived the same day as him and he had met in London before. The comedy is funny because that girl, who is not an aristocrat, far from it, does all the mistakes you can imagine English etiquette is going to frown upon severely. She pretends to be a plumber and she repairs some toilet or washstand in a jiffy in front of a middle-class family, their guests and the pharmacist who was getting enamored. The result is the departure of all the guests, after the departure of the pharmacist's mother, and then she is practically rejected. She does not know what class differences are. She will of course be captured by the Czech refugee and taken to America where he is going to become a popular writer and she will finally be away from silly class distinctions. It is funnily absurd and the Lord and his Lady are just passé and old-fashioned, quaint is probably the word if we want to remain nice. Lubitsch takes great pleasure at showing how silly such class-distinctions are. The whole comedy is more humorous than really funny and that humor always remains polite, even at times mundane, though in the light American way.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID