New Approaches to Ernst Lubitsch: A Light Touch, co-edited by Brigitte Peucker and Ido Lewit, is a collection of unpublished essays that addresses multiple gaps in scholarly and critical engagement with the noted German director. The book focuses on Lubitsch’s relatively obscure early German films, shedding light on Jewish culture, the relation of comedy to gender, and the influence of theater on his filmmaking. Attention also goes to Lubitsch’s popular historical epics, which earned him an invitation to Hollywood in 1922, where he helped develop the film musical and notably contributed to the genre of Hollywood romantic comedy. The well-known scholars—film historians, archivists, and theorists—whose essays appear in this volume expand our knowledge of the set designers, actors, directors, and members of the emigré community who contributed to Lubitsch’s vibrant films. The book’s emphasis on the role of material objects opens up a new dimension of critical engagement with the director; light is shed on neglected films, and the antifascist dimension of his oeuvre brings his political stance into focus.
Brigitte Peucker is the Elias Leavenworth Professor Emerita of German and Film & Media Studies at Yale University. Her books on cinema include Incorporating Images: Film and the Rival Arts, The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film, and Aesthetic Spaces: The Place of Art in Film. She is the editor of Wiley-Blackwell’s A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Ido Lewit is a teaching fellow at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and is the co-editor of Mediamorphosis: Kafka and the Moving Image.