Ernst Lubitsch

The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent. David Thomson wrote of it:

Biographer Scott Eyman attempted to characterize the famed "Lubitsch touch":

Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be (1942), which was Jack Benny's only major screen success and Carole Lombard's last picture.

Lubitsch spent the balance of his career at 20th Century Fox, but a heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities. It has been claimed that the last picture made by the director with his distinctive "touch" was Heaven Can Wait (1943), another Raphaelson collaboration. The film is about Henry Van Cleve (played by Don Ameche) who presents himself at the gates of Hell to recount his life and the women he has known from his mother onwards, concentrating on his happy but sometimes difficult 25 years of marriage to Martha (Gene Tierney). Read Less