Die Bergkatze apparently rounds off Masters of Cinema’s Lubitsch in Berlin box set with appropriate heft: as the blurb asserts, this was “Lubitsch’s personal favourite work of all his German films, [it] represents a peak in both Lubitsch’s silent oeuvre and the silent cinema as a whole.” I wasn’t quite so enamoured with it.

Which, again, isn’t to say it’s bad. The setup takes some time to build up speed, but when it does the gags begin to flow more readily, even if it degenerates to a more stop-start pattern later on. But scenes like the Lieutenant leaving town to an army of toddlers crying “Adios, daddy!” are on the one hand simple but on the other inspired; the first battle sequence is full of marvellously surreal touches, like the robber-leader making coffee to be drunk mid-shoot-out; and the satire on the military (always welcome) is pleasantly thorough, taking pot-shots at numerous elements rather than picking one trait and exhausting it.

Lubitsch once again flips the roles of the sexes: the Lieutenant preens and prunes, spending ages tweaking his hair and clothes in the mirror, and one of the gang of robbers lies on a bed literally crying a river over his lost love; the titular robber’s daughter, however, leads a gang of men in thieving and fighting, living wild, free, and rather dirty, among them. A desired-by-all woman (Pola Negri, successfully branching out into comedy) and at least one mass of man-desiring women help round out a succession of familiar Lubitsch elements. Familiarity may be said to breed contempt, but Lubitsch’s reworking of similar sequences is more a recognisable touchstone than irritating repetition.

Location filming in snow-covered Alps adds a scale and breadth to the film’s imagined-kingdom setting that would be inimitable in a studio. Perhaps art director Ernst Stern was right that the realism of using genuine locations doesn’t quite sit with the highly stylised fort; on the other hand, a studio set simply wouldn’t have the same effect: this isn’t the card-and-wood world of Die Puppe, where clearly-fake trees and horses were all part of the illusion. Instead of seeming fake, then, the contrast of a hyper-real fort and genuine-but-exotic locations creates the sense of a proper fantastical realm rather than some fictional stage set. Stern’s design for the fort is beautiful, from the overall look to specific features in each room. It’s scale is quite astonishing, particularly considering it was built on location in the Alps.

Lubitsch’s love of camera mattes, seen with increasing frequency throughout Die Puppe, Die Austernprinzessin and, particularly, Anna Boleyn, is finally allowed free reign here, with shots that conform to the standard 4:3 frame seeming to be the irregularity amongst an unimaginable array of shapes and angles. At times it’s distracting, particularly at the start, but that’s more because it’s a technique we’re now almost entirely unused to rather than any flaw in Lubitsch’s application of it. That said, though he often uses the mattes to enhance or emphasise composition, or suggest something about a character or location, it’s not always clear why he’s choosing to vary the frame so much — other than the sheer fun of it, which, particularly in a comedy, may be reason enough.

Die Bergkatze was a flop on its release in Germany and consequently never distributed elsewhere. Maybe it was, as Lubitsch thought, an unwillingness on the part of German people to have the military satirised; maybe it was the extreme use of unusual framing techniques that left them cold; maybe they just didn’t like it. Though it’s far from my favourite film in the set, it didn’t and doesn’t deserve to be dismissed.

Read more reviews from Lubitsch in Berlin here.

Ich möchte kein Mann sein is the kind of silent film that might surprise some among a wider film-viewing audience, both in terms of the attitudes prevalent in what is occasionally assumed to be a highly prim era, and, even accepting that it really wasn’t, the things people were prepared to put on film then — the latter due to, I think, the perception of older films as wilfully innocent (a view no doubt influenced by the effect the Hays Code would later have on American movies).

But it’s anything but innocent: young ladies drinking, gambling and smoking, thinly veiled sex references, and multiple passionate — albeit drunken — kisses between two chaps. OK, so one of them’s a women in disguise, but when the truth is revealed at the end and the boy and girl (or, rather, man and girl) get together, one wonders if it’s such a perfect match after all… That it’s all played for laughs may be the key to making it permissible, and it is relentlessly comic. In a brisk 45-minute running time, Lubitsch allows nothing to outstay its welcome. Each little sketch within the narrative moves by as fast as it might today — in all likelihood faster, as the modern penchant seems to be to drag sketches out as long as possible, or at least until it’s stopped being funny. Twice over. This brevity may also be surprising to the uninitiated, refuting the assumption that overacting and labouring the point for an audience less accustomed to the shorthand of film were the order of the day.

Many memorable moments are produced throughout: the hypocritical early criticisms by Ossi’s uncle and governess; the men outside her window, rubbing their stomachs with ‘hunger’ in a shot framed from the waist down, not to mention the way they wave their canes around; similarly, the tailors stretching their tape measures as long as possible to impress our heroine; being squished on the train; the marauding horde of single women; the ‘gay’ kisses… Rarer is the sequence that doesn’t impress or linger in the memory.

Much of this is thanks to the film’s star, Ossi Oswalda. She’s obviously a skilled comedic actress, convincing as both a petulant tomboy and a boyish gent, capable of both drunken stumbling and coy giggling, by turns delightfully rebellious, sweetly put-upon and succinctly joyous. She’s even believable as a man (albeit a boyish one). It’s the kind of performance that’s infectious and makes you want to seek out more of her films (luckily, Lubitsch in Berlin contains two further examples). The rest of the cast fare well around her, particularly Margarete Kupfer as Ossi’s alternately stern and swooning governess.

Unfortunately, I can’t even attempt to put this in the context of the rest of Lubitsch’s work — shamefully, I’d barely heard of him prior to Masters of Cinema’s new set, never mind seen any of his films. MoC’s brand-new essays prove invaluable for me in this respect — immediately, this film’s, provided by Criterion’s Anna Thorngate, provides context of what the perception of Lubitsch’s Berlin work (vs his Hollywood work) is, and how Ich möchte kein Mann sein (amongst others) show this perception to be false — there is, in fact, a direct stylistic line between this and his better-known American films. Maybe when I see them I’ll spot it.

But, really, such knowledge and comparisons are entirely ancillary to one’s enjoyment of Ich möchte kein Mann sein. It’s all round a lot of fun, as well as no doubt offering some points of satire/debate about the differences between the sexes for those interested. Perhaps more pertinently, I can also see it serving as a good introduction to silent film: short, fast and funny, it has the potential to create converts.

Read more reviews from Lubitsch in Berlin here.