A charismatic lieutenant newly assigned to a remote fort is captured by a group of mountain bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce that is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained. A wonderfully anarchic and playfully subversive satire of military life from one of the great comedy filmmakers.
Direction
Lubitsch's 'touch' already fully formed—winks, nudges, suggestion.
Costume
Pola Negri's fur-trimmed bandit queen looks that scandalized censors.
Cinematography
German Expressionist shadows doing comedy, not horror.
Director
Ernst Lubitsch
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The film's original German title 'Die Bergkatze' refers to a wild mountain cat—slang for a sexually untamed woman, not the actual feline.
Lubitsch made this immediately before leaving Germany for Hollywood; it's his farewell explosion of Weimar-era sexual frankness before American censorship domesticated him.
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