Synopsis
"The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931) is an Ernst Lubitsch musical comedy — watch it online on iFILM. Maurice Chevalier plays Lieutenant Nikolaus, a charming Vienna officer who gets himself married to a princess he has never met, by accident, via a smile aimed at someone else entirely.
The woman he actually wants is Franzi (Claudette Colbert), a violinist he has been seeing quietly. The woman who misreads the smile is Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins), socially awkward and politically powerful enough to turn a moment of eye contact into a diplomatic incident. The solution, naturally, is a royal wedding. Nikolaus ends up a prince, trapped at a foreign court, with a wife he didn't choose and a girlfriend he can't give up. Lubitsch plays this as farce without a single wasted scene.
What the film does better than most comedies of the period is give the so-called wrong woman a real arc. Hopkins' princess earns her ending. Stream "The Smiling Lieutenant" online on iFILM.
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