Critics reviews

Like its central character, Ernst Lubitsch's 1934 adaptation of The Merry Widow is irrepressibly charming. And much like Lubitsch's film, its central character lets off a repellent stink on occasion. But how often does a prewar sex comedy age unscathed into the 21st century when most of the genre's output during the 1990s seems irredeemably retrograde a mere two decades later? Part of the game is pitting the Lubitsch's witty flourishes against the material's well-worn sexual politics.

[The Merry Widow is] a more reflective, somber and emotionally ambivalent film than Lubitsch's earlier efforts, a movie that seems very much aware of the passing of time and encroaching mortality that the earlier works had so elegantly suppressed.

The film constantly juxtaposes densely and sparsely populated and composed images, with the dexterous deployment of such devices as irises, fades and dissolves. Nevertheless, the most remarkable compositional element of the film is its highly expressive framing.