The Wildcat

Pola Negri stars as Rischka, the wildcat of the title. She is the leader of a gang of bandits. Their latest victim is Alexis, a caddish military officer on his way to his new post. Rischka and Alexis embark on a mad courtship leaving chaos in their wake. Director Ernst Lubitsch creates onscreen havoc that has rarely been equaled since.

So by now we have established that German film of the silent era was not all horror and darkness. These folks knew how to have a good time and to share it on the big screen. Ernst Lubitsch’s one-two punch of saucy comedies and historical spectacles fed into the popular tastes of the time.

Lubitsch would only make two more German films after The Wildcat (Die Bergkatze) and both of those were dramas. Hollywood beckoned, anxious to add Lubitsch to its stable of European talent. So, I guess it is appropriate that Lubitsch’s last German comedy would be the most un-Hollywood thing imaginable.

What I always enjoy about Ernst Lubitsch films is that every character has an angle they are working. For example, when Rischka is met by Alexis’s jilted fiancee, she comforts the girl but also takes to opportunity to steal her jeweled hairpins. The Commandant uses bunk inspection as an excuse to steal his men’s cigars.

Pola Negri, of course, steals the show as Rischka. Negri was famous for her glamour but she wasn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and throw herself into madcap comedy. In this film, her clothes are wild, her hair wilder and her personality is is volcanic. She shoots, shouts, fights, takes a buggy whip to her men (much to their joy), and generally creates merry mayhem. At one point, she even drags Alexis onto her lap for a passionate kiss.

I will say this about the film: it remains crazy from beginning to end. You cannot accuse it of inconsistency.