Trouble in Paradise (’32): Following a series of popular musical comedies, Ernst Lubitsch gets back to what he does best, witty romance with suggestive pre-code banter, with this sophisticated fore bearer to the more famous screwball comedies of the latter half of the decade. Romancing both Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall is the epitome of handsome rakishness, playing a master jewel thief who schemes with his lover (Hopkins) to swindle perfume heiress Francis, falling in love with the sexually aggressive proprietress instead. Lubitsch’s revered style is surprisingly fluid for a film of the early ‘30’s, and his collaboration with playwright Samson Raphaelson, his most frequent partner, is filled with the kind of innuendo that would be virtually impossible to get away with in the coming code era, but was of a particular fantasy escape for audiences during the depression.