Against the idea that comedy offers us a relief from the horrors of the real world, the German-Jewish-American filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch defended his masterpiece To Be or Not to Be, a comedy from 1942 about the concurrent Nazi occupation of Poland, with the claim that he had made up his mind “to make a picture with no attempt to relieve anybody from anything at any time.” The essays included in The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch consider Lubitsch’s work from his early Berlin years to his Hollywood fame, emphasizing the idea of ‘comedy without relief’ as the fundamental ethical premise of his special cinematic ‘touch.’ In this edited collection, contributors take a closer look at how Lubitsch addresses delicate and controversial topics like sexuality, love, and revolution, and set out a picture of an engaged ethics without moralism. The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch is a vital contribution to film scholarship and a tribute to an essential filmmaker.

"The contributions collected in this book examine Lubitsch's best Hollywood pictures from the 1930s and '40s--Trouble in paradise, Design for living, Ninotchka, To be or not to be, and Cluny Brown--to demonstrate that comedy, at its best, is not merely a matter of providing comic relief."--Page 4 of cover.

An analysis of contemporary authoritarianism and the medium in which it flourishes, the internet, as well as what lies at the complex intersection of authority and technology. In recent decades, a new style of authoritarian politics has taken hold throughout the liberal-democratic world. The new authority figures are characterized by obscene, transgressive behavior, reminiscent of the “crowd” leader as theorized by Freud, only far less transient. In The Emperor's New Nudity, Yuval Kremnitzer considers the fraught intersection of authority and technology—the internet being the medium that has allowed contemporary authoritarianism to thrive—asking foundational questions such as: How can we think of the network as a social phenomenon? What can social and political phenomena teach us about the nature of the new technology? And how does technology reshape the very fabric of social and political life? Technology, Kremnitzer writes, leads us toward an impersonal and hyperrational world to such an extent that it renders human subjectivity outmoded. Authority, on the other hand, anchors our subjective identifications to certain figures and seems to be hopelessly primitive and irrational. What is required, then, is a dialectics of the primal—a study of the way in which what strikes us as essential enters into the dynamics of historical change. From this perspective, authority and technology can be said to be divided by a common object—the unwritten law, and the special knowledge that pertains to it: a knowledge without knowers.

Hundreds of German-speaking film professionals took refuge in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, making a lasting contribution to American cinema. Hailing from Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, as well as Germany, and including Ernst Lubitsch, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, and Fritz Lang, these multicultural, multilingual writers and directors betrayed distinct cultural sensibilities in their art. Gerd Gemünden focuses on Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934), William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942), Bertolt Brecht and Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die (1943), Fred Zinnemann's Act of Violence (1948), and Peter Lorre's Der Verlorene (1951), engaging with issues of realism, auteurism, and genre while tracing the relationship between film and history, Hollywood politics and censorship, and exile and (re)migration.

Orson Welles called Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) “a giant” whose “talent and originality are stupefying.” Jean Renoir said, “He invented the modern Hollywood.” Celebrated for his distinct style and credited with inventing the classic genre of the Hollywood romantic comedy and helping to create the musical, Lubitsch won the admiration of his fellow directors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, whose office featured a sign on the wall asking, “How would Lubitsch do it?” Despite the high esteem in which Lubitsch is held, as well as his unique status as a leading filmmaker in both Germany and the United States, today he seldom receives the critical attention accorded other major directors of his era. How Did Lubitsch Do It? restores Lubitsch to his former stature in the world of cinema. Joseph McBride analyzes Lubitsch’s films in rich detail in the first in-depth critical study to consider the full scope of his work and its evolution in both his native and adopted lands. McBride explains the “Lubitsch Touch” and shows how the director challenged American attitudes toward romance and sex. Expressed obliquely, through sly innuendo, Lubitsch’s risqué, sophisticated, continental humor engaged the viewer’s intelligence while circumventing the strictures of censorship in such masterworks as The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. McBride’s analysis of these films brings to life Lubitsch’s wit and inventiveness and offers revealing insights into his working methods.

Action, African greats, alcohol, Robert Aldrich, aliens, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Robert Altman, animated, anime, apocalypses, Argentina, art, Asia minor, avant garde... And that's just A for you. A taste of this fabulously quirky and enjoyable book which is both a celebration of movies - and movie trivia - and a handy, entertaining guide to films that we know you will enjoy. It is fantastically functional. The lists are well conceived and easy to understand - mostly assembled by genre, actor, director, theme or country of origin - and the reviews are witty and informative. Oddly enough, most movie guides are not full of recommendations. But Movie Lists is, in spades, leaving readers in no doubt that the films reviewed are the business. Oh - and you don't have to watch them all before you die. There is no premise of death in this book. You just need to get down to the local Blockbusters or flick your remote to Movies on Demand. Only the popcorn is not supplied.

From its etymological roots, sex is related to a scission, Latin for sectus, secare, meaning "to divide or cut." Therefore, regardless of the various studies applied to defining sex as inscribed by discursive acts, i.e. merely a 'performatively enacted signification,' there is something more to sex than just a social construction or an aprioristic substance. Sex is irreducible to meaning or knowledge. This is why psychoanalysis cannot be formulated as an erotology nor a science of sex (scientia sexualis). In this matter, sex escapes the symbolic restraints of language; however, it is through its failure that it manifests itself through the symbolic, e.g. symptoms or dream life. So, what is sex? Sex and Nothing embarks upon a dialogue between colleagues and friends interested in bridging psychoanalysis and philosophy, linking sex and thought, where what emerges is a greater awareness of the irreducucibility of sex to the discourse of knowledge and meaning: in other words, sex and nothing.