Pola Negri in Ernst Lubitsch's "The Wildcat" (1921) Die Bergkatze
27Act I - Kommandant der Festung Tossenstein (Victor Janson), the commander of an isolated border fortress, receives word that charismatic Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) has been assigned there as punishment. This delights his wife (Marga Köhler) and daughter. Elsewhere, vast mobs of women line the streets to bid Alexis goodbye (as does a horde of young children who call him Daddy).
Act II - On the sleigh ride to his new posting, Alexis is pelted by a snowball by a young woman. When he gets out of the sleigh, he is surrounded by armed men, part of a gang of feared robbers nominally led by Claudius (Wilhelm Diegelmann), but in reality under the bidding of his daughter, Rischka (Pola Negri). Rischka forces Alexis to take off his uniform. He nonchalantly kisses her hand anyway. When one of the men draws his dagger, Rischka intervenes and lets Alexis go unharmed, in his "underclothes".
Act III - When Alexis arrives at the fort, Lilli (Edith Meller), the commander's daughter, likes what she sees. The commander sends Alexis with a large musical band and a smaller detachment of soldiers to punish the robbers, but despite being outnumbered, Rischka and her men have little trouble routing their attackers. When the soldiers return to the fort, their commander assumes they have been victorious and gives Alexis Lilli's hand in marriage as a reward. None of the men bother to correct him.
There is a great celebration, with fireworks, an orchestra, dancing and drinking. Rischka sneaks into the fortress with some of the robbers and proceeds to loot a bedroom. She puts on a dress she finds there, and the men don uniforms. Then they all join the party. Alexis spots her and gives chase, finally trapping her in a room. They embrace, but then he decides his duty requires him to turn her in. He locks her in, but a jealous Lilli later opens the room and makes Rischka leave before Alexis returns with soldiers.
Act IV - Claudius also decides it is time for his daughter to marry. The robbers remind him that he promised one of them the honor. When Rischka demands to know who it will be, all but one slink away. Only Pepo (Hermann Thimig) remains. Rischka does not take him seriously, until he unexpectedly knocks her down and drags her away by her legs. Shocked at first by this atypical behavior, she eventually showers him with kisses, and they embrace in the snow. As part of the wedding ceremony, Claudius chains the couple together at the wrist. However, Rischka becomes sad when she reads of the betrothal of Alexis and Lilli. Seeing this, Pepo unchains her.
She goes to Alexi's suite. He is glad to see her, and goes to change into something more comfortable. While he is gone, Lilli arrives. Seeing her rival, she bursts into tears, causing Rischka to promise to make things right (though she does steal Lilli's necklace while comforting her). When Alexis returns, Rischka acts so boorishly that he becomes disgusted. She returns to Pepo, while Alexis greets Lilli more warmly.
A 1921 German Black & White silent, farcical romantic comedy film (a/k/a "The Mountain Cat"), subtitled "Grotesque in four acts", directed by Ernst Lubitsch, produced by Paul Davidson, written by Hanns Kräly and Lubitsch, cinematography Theodor Sparkuhl, starring Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Marga Köhler, Edith Meller, Paul Heidemann, Wilhelm Diegelmann, Hermann Thimig, Paul Graetz, Max Gronert, Erwin Kopp, and Paul Biensfeld.
The early German silents established the incredible Ernst Lubitsch’s reputation not only as master/creator of the hyper-risqué hundred-karat rom-com (the “Lubitsch Touch” film), but as an innovator of set design, an able director of extras, and a capable pacer of melodramatic arcs. These traits, calling cards for Lubitsch’s eventual and triumphant Hollywood career (directing such immortal classics as "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) and "To Be or Not to Be" (1942), manifest themselves across six varied works, riotous in every sense: Ich möchte kein Mann sein/"I Wouldn’t Like to Be a Man" (1918), Die Puppe/"The Doll" (1919), Die Austernprinzessin/"The Oyster Princess" (1919), "Sumurun" (1920), "Anna Boleyn" (1920), and this.
This was shot at the Tempelhof Studios in Berlin. Set in one of Lubitsch’s hallmark mythical kingdoms, this film finds Lubitsch in exuberantly expressionistic mode, employing a host of optical masks to create perhaps the most visually audacious comic spectacle of his career. Lubitsch’s personal favorite work of all his German films, this represents a peak in both Lubitsch’s silent oeuvre and the silent cinema as a whole.
The film keeps the viewer's interest thanks to a fast pace throughout, non-stop gags and Lubitsch masks the frame with an unending array of shapes (slashing rectangles and squeezed ovals and zigzagging outlines, veritable cutouts in a storybook) and dotes on wavy architecture that suggests Gaudí in the Alps. The "Smiling Lieutenant" (1931) is born here, so is Renoir's enlisted poet "Tire au flanc" (1928).