Jewel Robbery has experienced a formidable change of fortune recently. In the past, film historians sometimes mentioned it respectfully in passing in the context of William Powell’s career, or as an example of elegant pre-code badinage, or as one of the more successful imitations of Lubitsch’s style. It’s getting a lot more love nowadays, and if the trend continues it may soon be treated as one of the best film comedies of the early 1930s. One reason for the change has to be that it used to be so hard to see it. It was rarely shown in repertory movie houses, and the only copies available were terrible bootleg prints with almost unintelligible sound (fatal for a comedy with fast and snappy dialogue). You’d be lucky to catch a rare showing on one of TCM’s William Powell Weeks. Another reason is probably that it was released in the same year as Lubitsch’s Olympian Trouble in Paradise, which has a somewhat similar set-up — a debonair European jewel-thief hero — and also stars Kay Francis. It’s rare to find a mention of it that doesn’t speculate that Jewel Robbery is an homage to Trouble in Paradise. One problem with that is that MGM released Jewel Robbery in July of 1932; Paramount released Lubitsch’s film in November. In 2012 Warner finally released a fine new print on DVD — but even that one is included in a collection, Forbidden Hollywood, volume 4, as if it were just another pre-code curio.
I’m very fond of Jewel Robbery. Its neglect makes no sense to me. The story may seem trite, but it’s not the meat, it’s the motion. We’re in Vienna, maybe fin-de-siècle, maybe the today of fantasy 1932. The supremely, gorgeously bored Baroness Teri von Hohrenfels (Kay Francis), married to the dull Baron André (André Luguet), a banker with “eight fifty-five [millions] and chronic gout,” sallies forth to the most elegant jeweler in the city to receive and moon over the diamond she covets most in the world. Her ecstasy is interrupted by a gang of impeccably courteous robbers, whose chief (known in the film only as “The Robber” — played by Powell) proceeds to relieve the jeweler and his customers of their burdens with the most refined Côte d’Azur manners. The Baroness is entranced by his grace and gallant flirtation; he’s entranced by her beauty. He later sneaks into her bedroom via drainpipe for a chat. The courtship continues with the champagne immorality of the most elegant high bourgeois farces — and then she decides to join the debonair outlaw in Nice.
The script interests me for lots of reasons. First, it’s an adaptation of a “Hungarian play” — literally. The original, by Ladislas Fodor, was a frothy Budapest comedy, entitled Ékszerrablás a Váci utcában [“Jewel Robbery on Váci utca” — Váci utca was the most elegant boulevard in the city]. It had all the qualities that Lubitsch looked for in a “Hungarian play”: hyper-decorous nonsense, aristocratic nonchalance regarding bourgeois morality, insouciant wit, and enough obscurity that it could be changed at the director’s will. Fodor’s plays and screenplays became mainstays of Hollywood productions (interestingly, not by Lubitsch himself), but there’s something special about this one. First, Jewel Robbery actually has the feel of the most stylish of the Hungarian film comedies made around the same time. It was directed by William Dieterle, one of the most gifted of the German émigré directors of the time. (He had no great love for the film itself, but it’s a fine example of the Berlin influence on Hollywood.) More important is that its adapted dialogue is scintillating in English. I haven’t been able to locate a copy of the original Hungarian play (it’s on my to-do list), but I’m certain the adaptation is sharper and funnier.
The film’s affinities with Lubitsch’s style are obvious, but superficial. Kay Francis plays Baroness Teri as a girlish, literally entitled gold digger. She’s a rich, spoiled innocent, starstruck both by jewels and the gentleman robber. We never leave the Vienna pastry world of aristocratic indolence. There’s almost no trace of class doubt. She lives in a ornamental world the petite bourgeoisie would love to live in. Powell’s butler ex machina in My Man Godfrey will re-moralize a similar world but here he’s still free from that heavy burden. Powell is quite amazing in the film. He’s William Powell playing William Powell. The story is so “thin,” so short (24 hours for the action, just over an hour for the film), and in such a confined setting that Powell basically just performs the abstract type for which he was already famous; he’s a mask bordering on camp. It’s a thing of beauty. We’re not distracted by dramatic human entanglements — we see his totally assured gestures, the pacing of his voice, his malice-free irony, how he wears his elegant outfits as if they were a second skin, and how he makes the most theatrical flirtations seem plausible. (Powell never appeared in a Lubitsch film. He was scheduled to play Leon in Ninotchka but withdrew because of illness. Big pity.) I like Chevalier in earlier Lubitsch. That cheerful little-man superficiality is perfect for the dalliance comedies. But I can’t help but feel that many of the post-Chevalier films would have been much better with Powell in them. (Think of him in the place of Fredric March in Design for Living and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka). In any case, Powell in Jewel Robbery is on another level — displaying the perfection of the gallant trickster who would never stoop to deceive a beautiful woman. In the tradition of all those subtly edgy comedies in which the robber and the clever servant are better aristocrats than the ones with real titles, Powell’s Robber is the chivalrous bandit who steals from the rich not to give to the poor, but to underwrite his lifestyle-perfection, and who eschews the American bang-bang use of force — also making sure his victim is insured.
Jewel Robbery sometimes seems like a duet between Francis and Powell, and its subject is style. No more, no less — an insouciant romantic seduction that happens to be adulterous… but a rich beautiful young woman just wants to have fun, n’est-ce pas? The frothy superficiality is part of the point, which is basically the unfolding of a single metaphor: jewels :: women. Morally, that’s a non-starter. But for comedy, it’s, well… gold. The aficionado Jewell Robber treats to Baroness Teri as if she were the most beautiful jewel in the world, the very thing she herself loves most. (We’ll need a more refined shrink than Dr. Freud, even if this is Vienna, 1932.) The entire film is constructed around this trope.
Baroness Teri is introduced as a dazzling jewel worth owning (she’s consistently associated with sapphires rather than diamonds — her eyes, you see — so she’s a sapphire who longs to be a diamond).
The Impeccably Correct Gang arrive to relieve the upper class of their parasitical burdens with dazzling virtuosity. The contrast between the courtly Robber, on the one hand, and the two representatives of “The Present Order,” the outraged tough-guy Cabinet Minister (Hardie Albright) and the passive, world-weary Banker Baron (Henry Kolker) isn’t just a matter of style. It’s a political matter, too.
The Gentleman Robber performs the operation like a Monte Carlo master of ceremonies with a firm understanding of the affinities of robbery and business.
ROBBER: I do very little shooting these days. As a matter of fact, I’m opposed to the American School of banditry. I studied in Paris. You have to work harder, but you do acquire a certain finesse that is missing from the “stick ’em up and shoot them down” school. And note this, too — no mess, no confusion. A new stock can be moved in tomorrow. No bankruptcy lawyer ever cleared out a place more tidily. For which I must thank you all. You have cooperated beautifully.
Commentators often single out The Robber’s use of potent reefers to help calm his victims, but they rarely note the political conversation while he’s administering the weed. Unlike in Lubitsch, The Robber delivers a clear-eyed Weimarian analysis: his robberies are made possible by capitalism (“The Present Order”) with its conspicuous consumption, luxuries, and bankruptcy maneuvers — only, he is more honest and attentive than bankers and government officials.
ROBBER: Once in Paris —
ACCOMPLICE: it’s getting late, sir.
ROBBER: Oh, yes. Cigarette?
HOLLANDER: No, thanks.
ROBBER: Mr. Hollander, do smoke one of my cigarettes.
HOLLANDER: With pleasure.
ROBBER: Now, inhale deeply. Thank you. Yes, in Paris once, as I started to tell you, I carried away a case of gold in broad daylight, and 12 gendarmes accompanied my motor. Nothing like having the help of the police.
BARON: Mere bravado.
ROBBER: Not at all. I don’t fancy your method of buying the authorities.
BARON: That’s a lie.
ROBBER: Come on, now, baron. We know that you bankers keep governments in your waistcoat pockets.
BARON: You’re a communist.
ROBBER: I’m not a communist. Go right on smoking, Mr. Hollander. Never mind us. Oh, the present order of society is entirely satisfactory to me. You think I should do as well for myself under communism? What should I steal? Power plants? Grain elevators?
BARON: International finance takes brains.
ROBBER: He’s not laughing at you, baron. It’s just life you’re laughing at, Mr. Hollander, isn’t it?
BARON: If you’re so clever, why not come around to my office someday, and I’ll try you out?
ROBBER: I couldn’t take that chance. You’re a banker. You might not be honest with me.
The politics is ironic, of course. We know that in the world of power plants and grain elevators (in other words, of electricity and food), there’d be no surplus for virtuosity. And in the end, nothing matters as much as virtuosity.
That virtuosity is evident throughout Jewel Robbery. It’s in the actors’ performances, the wonderful dialogue, the dazzling costumes, Dieterle’s mise en scène, and Robert Kurrle’s photography. Kurrle was one of the giants of the Hollywood camera in the 1920s and early 30s, until his death in 1932, the year he filmed Jewel Robbery. With the new print of the film, we can see how the visual virtuosity — really remarkable for a film with such a confined setting — complements the acting and script.
A lovely film that deserves more love.