The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch: Comedy Without Relief

This collection considers Lubitsch, the famous author of Weimar and classical Hollywood cinema, as a role model for our times. From this ethical position Lubitsch’s cinema is regarded as a conceptual tool to unlock the serious issues of contemporary politics, culture, philosophy, philosophy of art and theatre. It is not only the socio-political or philosophical context of Lubitsch’s work that is at stake in these chapters; they go deeper than a simple film reading to explore Lubitsch as a lexicon with which we can analyze and explore the issues of our time.

The authors explore implications of films for political philosophy and re-think his ideas of revolution, communism, and capitalism (films such as Ninotchka, Oyster Princess). Many authors explore Lubitsch’s indirect approach to sexuality as a way to maintain the romantic and mysterious nature of sex in our time, as instead as a source of obscenity and awkwardness. Authors also explore radical political incorrectness and vileness of his characters, suggesting that one can solve the tyranny of PC and the absence of humor today with the help of Lubitsch. They also explore his feminism that could be used as a contrast to the #MeToo movement.

Ivana Novak is a curator of the film programme at the Slovenian national television (RTV Slovenija). She is a film critic and theoretician, a musician and a PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana. Her main topics of research are humour and comedy, classical American and European cinema and television series. She has co-edited several books: Lubitsch Can’t Wait (2014), Stanley Cavell: Refleksija filma (2015), and Do zadnjega smeha: Preston Sturges (2016).

Gregor Moder is a senior research associate in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (2016) and Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (2017), and he coedited The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances (2020). He is currently the principal investigator in a research project on the ＂Theatricality of Power.＂