Broken Lullaby
Though famed for his Golden Age comedies, Ernst Lubitsch also had a knack for the serious stuff. In 1932's antiwar film Broken Lullaby, he grapples with guilt, redemption, and post-traumatic stress disorder—then known as shell shock—in the post-World War I period.
In the prologue, Paul (Dinner at Eight's Phillips Holmes), a French soldier kills a German in the trenches while he's writing to his fiancée. Immediately filled with regret, Paul finishes signing the letter, using Walter's own hand, and presumably mails it (Lubitsch doesn't show that part).
Later, the melancholy, solemn-faced young man confesses to his priest that he's having a hard time living with the guilt. The priest offers absolution, but it isn't enough, so Paul travels to Walter's village to place flowers on his grave. When Walter's mother (Louise Carter) asks him about his relationship, he doesn't have the heart to tell her that he killed her only son.
Viewing him as a friend rather than a foe, despite his French lineage, she and her husband (It's a Wonderful Life's spirited Lionel Barrymore) welcome him with open arms as the last living link to their much-missed boy. Soon their gloom starts to lift. Paul establishes an even more intimate rapport with Walter's fiancée, Elsa (Hot Saturday's charming Nancy Carroll), who encourages him to stick around when he tells her it's about time he returned home.
If the Holderlin family embraces Paul, the older man's associates, many of whom lost sons on the battlefield, remain skeptical, but in defending him, Mr. Holderlin reveals the rot at the heart of war—old men send young men to fight and die, and then do it all over again, This is an indication that Lubitsch, a Jew who had fled the rising Nazi regime, foresaw more death and destruction ahead. "I'm with the young," Mr. Holderlin declares. When Elsa shares Walter's final letter with Paul, he recites the last lines from memory, and in that moment, she realizes the truth.
Author Joseph McBride (How Did Lubitsch Do It?), in his very fine commentary track, believes that a strong ending—a moving duet between Paul, a violinist, and Elsa, a pianist—helps to elevate a film marred by overacting on the parts of Holmes and Barrymore, though their performances don't seem particularly outsized for the era.
If the plotline sounds familiar, that may be because French filmmaker François Ozon adapted the same material for 2016's superior Frantz, also shot in black and white, though Ozon changed crucial details, i.e. he presents the scenario from the perspective of the fiancée rather than the soldier, and also suggests that he isn't quite oriented the same way. Both films draw from Maurice Rostand's play, The Man I Killed.
In Lubitsch's case, the studio understandably balked at such a downbeat title, but despite glowing reviews, Broken Lullaby died at the box office. This unsung Lubitsch drama is just as deserving of attention as the director's stellar comedies, both for its timeless theme and heartfelt presentation. Recommended for public libraries looking to develop their classic film collection or titles focusing on World War I.