The Doll (Die Puppe) (Color Tinted) (Silent) / Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (Documentary)

Produced in Berlin in 1919, Ernst Lubitsch's The Doll (Die Puppe) is a charming romantic fantasy that shows the director already in full command of the now-legendary "Lubitsch touch."

Presaging such playful sex comedies as Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living, The Doll follows the misadventures of an effete young man who must get married in order to inherit a fortune. He opts to purchase a remarkably lifelike doll and marry it instead, not realizing that the doll is actually the puppet-maker's flesh-and-blood daughter, in disguise.

Featuring interviews with daughter Nicola Lubitsch, film historians Enno Patalas and Jan-Christopher Horak and filmmaker Tom Tykwer (among others), Ernst Lubitsch In Berlin documents the life of the legendary filmmaker from his birth in 1892 to his departure for Hollywood in 1923. The feature-length documentary is sprinkled with excerpts from Lubitsch's rarely-seen early work (both as actor and director) and offers fascinating insights into the German film industry in the silent era.

This early comedy from director Ernst Lubitsch tells the magical story of a girl-shy young man who, in order to inherit his father's money, must get married. This frightening prospect finds an elegant solution when he is betrothed to a puppet-maker's lifelike, quasi-robotic doll. What the young groom doesn't realize is that he's accidentally taken the puppet-maker's real-life daughter as his bride! Complications follow in this charming silent film of women-as-objects and objects-as-women, full of the witty humor that made Lubitsch so popular during his time.