The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg [VHS]
Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this sentimental romantic drama, a famous operetta about a young prince who falls in love with a commoner. A kindly tutor (Jean Hersholt) effectively raises the boy in a splendorous kingdom of rolling hills and vast forests while his distant father rules in the cold, tradition-bound palace. When he turns 18, Prince Karl Heinrich (Ramon Novarro) is sent to Heidelberg for an education, in more ways than one. He enrolls incognito to get a taste of real life and falls in love with the kittenish, sweetly rambunctious barmaid Katchen (Norma Shearer). The prince becomes so caught up in his student revelries, school chums, and his first love, that he forgets he has a world outside of university until royal duties call him back to the palace. Shot partly on location in Germany, where the gorgeous countryside contrasts with the lavish palace and quaint German beer garden built on the MGM lot, this was the grandest of Lubtisch's productions to date, though one where his famous wit played second fiddle to glossy melodrama. The marriage of Lubitsch and MGM seems near perfect: the studio offered the glitz and the star power, and Lubitsch the intimacy. This is real tearjerker material, but Lubitsch's sensibility brings rollicking fun and a playful sense of sexual discovery in the first half, and pathos to the bittersweet romantic drama that ends the film.--Sean Axmaker