--- title: "The Smiling Lieutenant" year: 1931 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-smiling-lieutenant" fi1m_score: 78 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-19T22:03:34.963051+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T22:03:45.215184+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) Directed by Ernst Lubitsch · 1h 29m · MPA NR · Comedy, Romance **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Chevalier winks at the wrong woman and an entire kingdom takes it personally > Ernst Lubitsch’s early talkie is a sly, good-natured operetta about a misdirected wink, and Miriam Hopkins steals it from under Maurice Chevalier’s grin. The songs are the weakest thing in it. ## Synopsis Vienna, in the last years of the Emperor Franz Josef. Lieutenant Nikolaus ‘Niki’ von Preyn (Maurice Chevalier), an officer of the guard with a full diary of women, is taken by his friend Max (Charles Ruggles) to a beer garden to hear Franzi (Claudette Colbert), a violinist who leads an all-female orchestra. Within a night she is having breakfast at his flat. Then King Adolf XV (George Barbier) of the small kingdom of Flausenthurm arrives in Vienna on a state visit with his daughter, Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins). Niki, lining the route, smiles and winks at Franzi across the street. The Princess, passing in her carriage, believes the wink was meant for her, takes it as an insult, and demands that the lieutenant be brought to the palace to explain himself. ## Review Ernst Lubitsch made *The Smiling Lieutenant* in 1931, when talking pictures were still young and most directors were filming actors standing very still beside a hidden microphone. He chose instead to make an operetta about a night of adultery, a state visit and a wink that lands on the wrong woman, set it in Vienna and a made-up kingdom called Flausenthurm, and trust that the audience would enjoy being winked at too. We did. This is a small, sly, kindly film, and it is worth your evening if you have any patience for early musicals. Its songs are its weakest part and its ending is its strangest, and we will come to both. Maurice Chevalier plays Niki, a lieutenant whose main military duty appears to be women, and his method is to grin at the camera until it gives in. For about an hour it does. He has one trick, the lopsided smile and the shrug, and Lubitsch uses it the way a cook uses salt, sparingly and then all at once. By the last reel we were a little tired of him. The two women in the film are not, and that is the plot. Claudette Colbert’s Franzi is the film’s warmth. She plays a working musician who knows exactly what a night with a lieutenant is worth and takes it anyway, and the breakfast she shares with Chevalier the morning after, sung over coffee and rolls, is the frankest thing in the picture about what has happened between them. Miriam Hopkins is the surprise. Her Princess Anna arrives under a hat that could shelter a family, in a dress her grandmother would have called dowdy, sulking through games of draughts with her father, and Hopkins plays her not as a joke but as a young woman who has never once been looked at. When she decides she has been, her certainty is alarming. George Barbier’s King Adolf is fat, fond and easily managed, and Charles Ruggles does the nervous friend with his usual fluster. George J. Folsey shoots it with more movement than most films of the year managed. The camera runs along the guard of honour as the royal carriage passes, and Merrill G. White cuts the wink itself so that we see Niki, then Franzi, then Anna’s face, and understand the whole mistake before anyone on screen does. Lubitsch’s habit of playing a scene on a closed door or a raised eyebrow is already fully formed; a bedroom is described entirely by Niki’s orderly (Hugh O’Connell) and his expression. Oscar Straus’s music is the problem. The tunes are pleasant and gone by the time you reach the kettle, the sound recording is thin, and Chevalier’s numbers stop the film rather than carry it. Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson’s script, from Hans Müller-Einigen’s novel, is so much funnier than the songs that we caught ourselves waiting for them to finish. We laughed out loud, alone on a sofa, when the wink is explained to the King; it is a scene built on three people each misunderstanding the other two, and Lubitsch times it like a watchmaker. We were also, by the end, more uneasy than we expected to be. This is a comedy about two women and one man, and the arithmetic of that cannot come out even. We will not say how the film settles it, only that we were less comfortable with the answer than the film seemed to be, and that the discomfort is the thing that stayed with us afterwards. Set against the rest of Lubitsch, this sits below *Trouble in Paradise*, which came the following year and has Raphaelson’s wit with a stronger plot, and above [*The Love Parade*](https://film.one/film/the-love-parade), which had the grin without women who could answer it. The three critics we have read all liked it, as we do; the New York notices of 1931 praised the music far more than we can, and we suspect the microphones of the day flattered it. At 89 minutes it is the length of a proper dinner. Watch it with the sound turned up, because the recording is old and the best lines are thrown away. *Fi1m score 78, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (3) - **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): Wit and melody swing through the picture thanks to Lubitsch's rapier-like comedy and Straus's charming music. Chevalier is a delight, with strong support from Colbert, Hopkins and Barbier; Lubitsch masters the microphone and camera. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1931/05/23/archives/the-screen-a-gay-parisian-miss-landis-new-picture-on-the-ocean.html) - **Slant Magazine** (70/100, inferred): The Smiling Lieutenant represents a substantial leap forward in Lubitsch's early musicals, pairing Chevalier with two exciting Paramount women in a diverting but shallow pleasure. It highlights the director's playful innuendo and comic timing through scenes like the breakfast duet and the lingerie makeover song. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/eclipse-series-8-lubitsch-musicals-2/) - **Variety** (70/100, inferred): The film is a pert yarn of free morals with smart work from Lubitsch, Vajda and Raphaelson. The disappointing Oscar Straus score is a weakness, but performances by Chevalier, Hopkins and others deliver laughs and charm. [Read](https://variety.com/1930/film/reviews/the-smiling-lieutenant-1200410384/) ## Details - **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Screenplay:** Samson Raphaelson, Ernest Vajda - **Writer:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Novel:** Hans Müller-Einigen - **Cinematography:** George J. Folsey - **Editor:** Merrill G. White - **Music:** Oscar Straus - **Producer:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Cast:** Maurice Chevalier as Lt. Nikolaus 'Niki' von Preyn; Claudette Colbert as Franzi; Miriam Hopkins as Princess Anna; Charles Ruggles as Max; George Barbier as King Adolf XV; Hugh O'Connell as Niki's Orderly; Maude Allen as Lady in Waiting (uncredited); Granville Bates as Bill Collector (uncredited) - **Runtime:** 1h 29m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 1 August 1931 - **Genres:** Comedy, Romance ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. ## If you liked this - *Trouble in Paradise* (1932): Lubitsch and Raphaelson a year later, with thieves instead of soldiers and a tighter plot - *Love Me Tonight* (1932): Chevalier as a tailor among aristocrats; Mamoulian cuts the songs into the film properly - *La Ronde* (1950): Ophüls circles the same Vienna of officers and lovers with a heavier heart - *Roman Holiday* (1953), Fi1m 88: Another princess slips her minders and discovers what ordinary people do all day — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/roman-holiday.md) - *The Grand Budapest Hotel* (2014), Fi1m 86: Wes Anderson’s invented Mitteleuropa owes Lubitsch its uniforms, its doors and its timing — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-grand-budapest-hotel.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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