Cast: Ossi Oswalda, Curt Goetz, Ferry Sikla
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Country: Germany
Genre: Comedy | Romance
The following review is a continuation of Matthew Blevins’ Subversive Saturdays series.
A few decades before the opulent debonair comedies that would make him an undeniable master of cinema, a young Ernst Lubitsch was tinkering with the limits of cinema’s potential as a tool for social commentary with his unassuming silent comedies that played with complex thematic elements in their relatively minimalistic structure. In his 1918 film, I Don’t Want to Be a Man, he played with the concepts of gender equality in a Germany that was facing a post World War I revolution and merely a heartbeat away from Nazism, revealing how a few decades and a dangerous political movement can completely alter the cultural landscape of a nation in unthinkable ways. While I Don’t Want to Be a Man sends mixed messages on the concreteness of gender roles and its potentially controversial content was played for comedy, it provides moments of imagery that were generations ahead of their time as a rebellious young woman tries to find her identity in a patriarchal society and dresses in men’s clothing, creating images that were heterosexual when put into proper context but seem intentionally confrontational as two drunken lovers steal forbidden kisses in a nightclub and in the back of a carriage while wearing dapper menswear.
She wants the freedom to drink away her troubles and is bemused by her would be suitors who vie for her attention and fight for her body parts as tailors engage in “innocent” acts of objectification.
Ossi Oswalda (hailed as Germany’s own version of Mary Pickford) plays a defiant young woman who plays poker and smokes with the swarthiest of servants, obstinate about the limitations imposed upon her gender and unwilling to honor the wishes of her reactionary wards. She wants the freedom to drink away her troubles and is bemused by her would be suitors who vie for her attention and fight for her body parts as tailors engage in “innocent” acts of objectification. A specialist is brought in to deal with her headstrong ways, but she is resistant to his attempts to turn her into a proper lady and attempts to pass herself off as a man to see what life is like for the other side. Being a man looks like a hell of a lot more fun, and she is strong-willed enough to give it a try.
She finds the social rule sets of patriarchal Germany to be a challenge when she gives her new identity a whirl in the outside world, finding out that drinking, smoking, and swearing were not the only concerns for a man and they have their own limitations and expectations as the world was simply not a place for total freedom, particularly for a member of high society. These moments of gender faux pas are played for laughs, but reveal greater truths about the social constructs that keep everyone from living outside of social norms. She becomes momentarily confused when forced to give up her seat to a lady on a train and told to suck up the pain of having her foot stomped on, little social realities of the time that are played with brilliant comedic flair by the immensely expressive Oswalda. Though audiences would have seen these moments as the misgivings of a foolhardy gender rebel, they capture the imposition of cultural norms that we actively participate in without having been given any say in the matter.
These moments of gender faux pas are played for laughs, but reveal greater truths about the social constructs that keep everyone from living outside of social norms.
The images go from innocuously comedic to intensely charged with sexuality and controversy as Ossi becomes increasingly drunk as she attempts to keep up with her male companion and specialist in gender propriety. The two attempt to avoid the sexual attraction they feel for one another, but their kisses become immensely powerful as they try and fail to resist these urges. Much in the way that Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant’s kisses are made more intense through Hitchcock’s playful subversion of the Hayes Code in Notorious in 1946, avoiding the three second limitation for on screen kisses by simply interrupting them continuously, the sexual energy between Ossi and Curt Goetz is intensified through its forbidden nature and the burning anticipation built through reluctance and visual taboos. One wonders what the audience reaction would have been seeing an antagonistically close shot of the two lovers sharing a fleeting moment of passion as the frame loses context and obfuscates gender identity.
While I Don’t Want to Be a Man is far from the cinematic heights that Lubitsch would later achieve, it shows a young director that is both socially conscious and astute in the image’s potential for power. It remains a an intriguing piece of cinematic history that has outgrown its inconspicuous comedic roots to expose deeper social truths that are still woefully relevant nearly a century later. Lubitsch uses comedy as a subversive conveyance to play with the issues of gender equality and the very nature of freedom as he playfully illustrates the impositions under which we all live. The rules and impositions will continually ebb and flow through all of human history, but for one brief moment an adroit young filmmaker pushed the limits and achieved something that would be unthinkable in his home country (and most of the world abroad) less than two decades later.
[notification type=”star”]75/100 ~ GOOD. While I Don’t Want to Be a Man is far from the cinematic heights that Lubitsch would later achieve, it shows a young director that is both socially conscious and astute in the image’s potential for power. It remains a an intriguing piece of cinematic history that has outgrown its inconspicuous comedic roots to expose deeper social truths that are still woefully relevant nearly a century later.[/notification]
