Trouble In Paradise (1932)

In Venice (nice model work here,) where a gondola is just as apt to be carrying a boatload of garbage by an opera singing gondolier (odd, directorial commentary here,) as it is likely to transport a countess an a secret rendezvous with a baron, Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a couple of crooks ‘meet cute’ while respectively thinking their counterpart is a rich victim who can easily be taken advantage of.

Their seduction technique that night consists in revealing what they have stolen from the other (with resulting sexual arousal.)

They immediately fall for each other and team up.

The opportunity to take advantage of Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), a rich widow arises when a stolen jewel encrusted purse at a Paris opera house proves more profitable for the reward than for its fence value.

After collecting the reward, Gaston gets hired by her as a personal secretary with Lily as his assistant.

The titular trouble refers to the fact that the perfume empire heiress doesn’t seem to care much about the wealth she inherited from her dead husband and instead seems to be a lot more interested in her new secretary than in any shady dealings or crooked bookkeeping he might be planning (or unearthing) which results in a jealous Lily.

Pretty soon Gaston finds himself juggling the two women, with the potential of choosing either one of them over the other, while at the same time trying to hide his identity from a previous victim (Everett Horton) whose memory of the event is fuzzy, but who is also pursuing Mariette.

Pre-Code content never goes beyond sexual suggestion: It’s obvious there is casual sex involved even if not referred to openly (just how the Hell did he manage to take off her garter to keep without her noticing it?) and immediately after we have the unmarried couple living together; but making two of the main protagonists criminals who never really get punished for their crimes (quite the opposite!) would soon be nixed with the ‘Crime Does Not Pay” clause.

This might be Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece and should easily have beaten Cavalcade for Best Film of the Year, if not for the fact that it was also against King Kong. Tough to beat that one.

With Charles Ruggles and C. Aubrey Smith.