Touch me

2010 foi o ano em que, finalmente, compreendi o significado de «Lubitsch touch». Cheguei lá pelos próprios meios, vendo alguns filmes (e que belos filmes). Mas se tivesse sido amparado pelo Michael Wood, também não teria ficado mal servido:

«Morgan, the boss, suspects Stewart of sleeping with his wife, and fires him without telling him the reason. Then the private detective Morgan has hired shows up with a full report. The rumour that Morgan’s wife was having an affair with one of his employees was true, but the man wasn’t Stewart. It was Ferencz Vadas, the flashy disagreeable man about town. Morgan thought it was Stewart, he later says, because Stewart had been to dinner at his house, and his wife had seemed taken with him and his thank-you note. But the real reason, we quickly gather, is that Morgan likes Stewart and can’t imagine his wife might want to have an affair with anyone else in his shop. So when Morgan thinks the culprit is Stewart, he fires him; when he learns the culprit is Vadas, he tries to commit suicide. The Lubitsch touch: your vanity can be caught up not only in your wife’s betrayal but in her taste.»

[Esta sucessão de eventos ocorre, tudo indica, no filme «The Shop around the Corner» de Ernst Lubitsch; um filme que eu, lamentavelmente, nunca vi. E parece que o shop nem sequer fica around the corner.]