The Smiling Lieutenant. 1931. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Film

No upcoming events

The Smiling Lieutenant. 1931. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Courtesy Paramount Pictures/Photofest

The Smiling Lieutenant. 1931. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Screenplay by Ernest Vajda, Samson Raphaelson, based on works by Leopold Jacobson, Hans Muller, Felix Bormann. With Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins, Charles Ruggles. 35mm. 88 min.

The third and perhaps most elegantly engineered of Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musicals stars Maurice Chevalier as a boulevardier perhaps too much in love with love to make a commitment to any woman in particular. A lieutenant in the court of a short-tempered Ruritanian king (George Barbier), Chevalier’s Niki is enjoying an affair with a violinist (Claudette Colbert) from an all-female orchestra when a smile and a wave at his lady friend is intercepted by the kingdom’s dowdy, repressed princess (Miriam Hopkins, in her second film appearance), who is thrilled to think he’s flirting with her. Lubitsch’s ability to find the greatest import in the smallest details intrigued Bogdanovich throughout his career, from At Long Last Love to Squirrels to the Nuts.

This film accompanies Peter Bogdanovich: American Filmmaker.

Past events

Fri, May 6, 2022, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].