To me, this movie is perfection.

Fantastic!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Tallulah Bankhead wasn't in many movies, and having only seen her in Lifeboat, I thought I should see her in something else, so I tracked down this. I'm quite pleased I did.Filmed very much as the stage play it originally was, this movie is quite funny, as quick-witted and slow-witted characters face off. Bankhead makes a wonderfully larger-than-life queen and Coburn is excellent as a sly chancellor. There's not a lot to the story, and at times I would feel a little distracted (the great difficulty of watching movies at home amidst one's other toys), but it was funny - sometimes very funny - and even though Preminger took over the direction due to Lubitch's illness, it has that Lubitch quality to it. There are better Lubitch films, but there are also worse ones, so I'd say Preminger did a good job.

This was begun by Ernst Lubitsch (who also produced) but, after suffering a heart attack, handed over the directorial reins to Preminger (who eventually received sole credit for it!) – as would happen all over again 3 years later when Lubitsch died early on during the production of the Ruritanian Technicolor musical THAT LADY IN ERMINE (1948)! The film under review is actually a Talkie remake of Lubitsch's Silent success FORBIDDEN PARADISE (1924; which seems to be available solely via an incomplete print boasting Czech intertitles!). It is yet another movie dealing with the reign of Catherine II of Russia, known as "The Great"; however, this was made at Fox instead of Paramount (Lubitsch had been Head Of Production there at the time of Josef von Sternberg's magnificent THE SCARLET EMPRESS {1934}). The tone is very different, too: being a comic romantic soufflé as opposed to a flamboyant epic (even if the Queen's various dalliances were still a major plot point of the Sternberg movie), this one ostensibly offered pure wartime escapism…but the result is so flat as to be insulting (depicting potentates as fickle figures concerning themselves with frivolities and rewarding soldiers over their bedroom antics rather than military tactics was hardly wise under such precarious circumstances!), much more so in fact than the accusations of bad taste levelled at Lubitsch's satirical – but not unfeeling – masterpiece TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)! Despite the typical studio gloss, a most able cast (led by Tallulah Bankhead as a not-so-young Catherine, Charles Coburn as her wily Chancellor, William Eythe breaking into the Palace bearing old news{!} but remaining to become the Queen's new favorite, Anne Baxter in an ALL ABOUT EVE {1950} dry-run as her lady-in-waiting and catty rival for the latter's affections, Vincent Price as the fey French ambassador who spends almost the entire running-time waiting to be received by Catherine{!}, a typically pompous Sig Rumann as the high-ranking officer planning a coup d'etat, Mischa Auer as a flustered sentry and Vladimir Sokoloff as a Palace adjutant) and a script by Edwin Justus Mayer (who also wrote the afore-mentioned Nazi lampoon), the film looks decidedly claustrophobic, is filled with deliberately overstated performances, and comes across as distinctly heavy-handed. Whether all this is the humorless Preminger's doing, however, is hard to determine – since, it must also be said, the famed "Lubitsch Touch" is barely in evidence throughout! Mind you, the picture is not unamusing per se (though hardly as witty as one would have expected given some of the people involved!) and it clearly gets by on sheer professionalism alone: what I find inexcusable is that such money and talent were squandered on an essentially silly, empty charade – and an incessantly verbose one at that!

NO film with Charles Coburn can really miss, and A ROYAL SCANDAL has so much more going for it on top of Coburn and top billed Tallulah, you want it to be as delicious a Lubitsch confection as it promises to be. It is for at least the first ten minutes while the pacing remains frantically break-neck (and some necks are nearly broken). Even when it inevitably slows down, it remains lightly enjoyable for most of its 94 minutes, but Otto Preminger was decidedly the wrong director to shepherd the Lubitsch project to fruition, and too much of the blithe banter, even in the hands of such reliable clowns as Sig Ruman just misses the mark as Tallulah alternately rages at and romps with alternating 'favorites' while senior minister Coburn protects her and her country (and keeps French Ambassador Vincent Price frustratingly off screen waiting his turn with the Empress).Coburn's scenes all sparkle with his amused knowing looks and quite conspiring, and "Guard of the East Gate" Misha Auer makes his few scenes comic gems, but neither handsome William Eythe (a Tyrone Power hopeful who never quite caught on - bad roles hurting more than rumors about his private life) nor the raging Tallulah (taking a slight wrong turn into costume farce after a dazzling contemporary outing for Hitchcock in LIFEBOAT) are given enough substance or variety in their frustrated - intended to be comic - dance of seduction to deliver either the hilarity or the sexual tension intended. With the exception of PORGY AND BESS, did a Preminger film *ever* understand the comic aspect of sex? His closest approach to subversive comedy may be in inexplicably showing COBURN more fond of Anne Baxter (William Eythe's on screen fiancé) than Eythe appears to be - but it would be easy to miss her entirely in an underwritten role but for Coburn's concern.Other than the polished LIFEBOAT, the great Tallulah's dozen or so movies (Bette Davis kept getting to make Bankhead's greatest stage roles in film - from DARK VICTORY to the LITTLE FOXES) show up so seldom these days, and so few of them preserve the comic touch which Bankhead was known for on stage (her Broadway revival of Noel Coward's PRIVATE LIVES is still the longest running production of that great comedy and her Sabina in Thorton Wilder's THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH is justly renowned) that no one should miss a chance to see A ROYAL SCANDAL, but the great misfortune the film originally suffered of opening the day before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died (can you think of a WORSE time for a farce/comedy to open?!) was not the only reason the film is not ranked among Lubitsch's masterpieces.Still, a Lubitsch near miss is as good as many another film maker's milestone. 'Well worth a look - and if it adds to our enjoyment to think of Ann Baxter's later role in ALL ABOUT EVE as a love letter from Tallulah to Bette, well, it isn't such a bad idea either.

I guess that Ernst Lubitsch's fans would like this production. To me, it was nothing more than a silly farce with Tallulah Bankhead's off-the-wall performance as Catherine The Great. Naturally, she is domineering here as she constantly tells everyone to shut up.This black and white costume period piece is basically the story of a vain woman refusing to admit that she is getting older and even though she is the queen, she flirts quite well with her subjects and others.Eythe, who was so good in 1947's masterpiece, "The House on 92nd Street," is foppish here as her devoted army officer who raises to general within 10 minutes after telling Catherine that she isn't safe.Anne Baxter is briefly seen but gives her all as a lady-in-waiting, the lover of Eythe. Then there is Charles Coburn in his usual take charge position as the treasurer. A sly fox, he knows which way the wind is blowing.Vincent Price briefly appears with his French accent as a count, who charms the heart of the great queen.