Babylon is one of the only cinemas I like to go to in Berlin, as I usually prefer to watch movies at home. I
like Babylon’s very rich and diverse program, the “secular” atmosphere of the place and its visitors, and
the design and style of the main screening hall.
Only very recently, after many previous visits, did I suddenly come across Ernst, who now I know is
Babylon’s most frequent visitor. One who for years hasn’t missed even one screening or event held in its
great hall. I hadn’t noticed him before. But now I know he’s always there, in the center seat of the third
row.
With his hat, a cigar in his mouth and another one
in his left hand, waiting to be lit to ensure the
needs of this chain smoker are well attended for.
Interestingly, he holds on his right hand a glove
puppet which is a small version of himself.
Strangely, the shoe on his left foot is a bit burned
(perhaps a result of some unfriendly
circumstances or encounters?).
Avi Berg: Ernst, how did you actually come to be
in the first place?
Ernst: Well, it is a peculiar story indeed. It was
thanks to dear Mr. Gunter Rometsch, the
founder of Schöneberg’s legendary
“Notausgang” Cinema that bore me. Not in the
existential real-life sense, but in my current
apparition.
In 1986, out of love and honor for my human
ancestor, the Berlin born Film director-auteur,
Ernst Lubitsch and his films, he commissioned sculptor Jürgen Walter to create me, out of wood and
plastic casting, and gave me a permanent seat of my own, in row 18.
By doing so, Mr. Rometsch was commemorating the fact that Lubitsch himself was told to have
frequented that very same hall (the building in Vorbergstraße 1 which housed cinemas as early as of
1914); and was also fulfilling Lubitsch’s will, that every cinema in the world should keep a seat for him.
The legend has it that whenever Rometsch showed a Lubitsch film in the Notausgang (something which
apparently happened quite often) he would tell his guests that they would be able to claim back the
money for their tickets, in the unimaginable case they found the movie unappealing. I assume this nonstandard and quite attractive offer was required due to the fact that through the years I had been a bit
forgotten in my home town…
AB: And what brought you to Babylon?
EL: I am afraid the Nineties weren’t the best period for us. In 1994, after being seriously ill, Rometsch
sadly committed suicide. Attempts were made to continue operating the Notausgang, but in 1999 it
closed down. I was subsequently transferred to the Film Museum in Potsdamer Platz. They placed me
there in on a seat facing the Sony Center. Their intentions were good and respectable. But I felt as if I
had been exiled. It was cold out there, uncomfortable. I felt estranged.
It was Timothy Grossman, a huge fan of Lubitsch, who rescued me and gave me a new, proper home in
the great hall of the Babylon, very close to where I used to live back then, in Rosa Luxemburg Platz,
before I left for America, in 1922, at the request of Mary Pickford (the actress and a significant figure in
the American film industry during these years) who was impressed and infatuated with my “Madame
DuBarry” and wanted me to direct her in a film (Rosita, 1923).
AB: What about Berlin?
EL: My success in Hollywood was astounding. I directed an uninterrupted string of hits, with each new
production surpassing my previous achievement. My sophisticated comedy style (please excuse my
immodestly) was widely appreciated and - imitated by other directors. But none could duplicate me at
my best -- incisive pictorial detail, the perfect timing, the nuances of gesture and facial expression that
enabled the actors in my films to reveal in a single brief shot the psychology of the characters they were
playing.
This chain of artistic and commercial triumphs during the silent period (Forbidden Paradise, Kiss Me
Again, Lady Windermere's Fan, The Student Prince, etc.) remained unbroken even during the delicate
transition to sound. If anything, witty dialogue and appropriate music and songs gave additional grip to
the “Lubitsch Touch”.
But my work was curtailed by failing health. In late 1944 I had to hand over the direction of “A Royal
Scandal” to Otto Preminger while remaining on the project only as the nominal producer. In 1947 I was
awarded a special Academy Award for my "25-year contribution to motion pictures.'' I died later that
year of a heart attack, my sixth.
Grossman told me he saw it as one of his life missions to bring me, Lubitsch, “back to Berlin”. Berlin after
all, is the place where I grew up and where I became the man and the artist that I am and from which I
drew a lot of my intrinsic qualities and inspiration. Despite my life in America and my huge success in
Hollywood I remained, in my heart, a German. And perhaps even more so, a Berliner. Enno Patalas once
said of me that I am the greatest of all German film directors.
AB: What about Žižek? What is the connection between you two?
EL: As is quite well known Slavoj Žižek uses cinema as a significant source in his philosophical writing.
Žižek mentions that “Europe in cinema”, at its purest, stands for a unique mixture of comedy and
melancholy. This mixture, with its deep insight on what it is in us which is human, indeed lies at the
heart of my films. Humor is essential. It is a liberating force. It counters hierarchies and stiff structures. It
enables a person to stay free, even in the harshest of circumstances. Humor is moral.
I appreciate Žižek’s reading.