Live accompaniment by Music Box house organist Dennis Scott | Programmed and Co-Presented by Chicago Film Society

Ernst Lubitsch had already acquitted himself capably in bringing the wit of Oscar Wilde to the screen without the benefit of spoken dialogue in his version of LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN, so why not adapt Sigmund Romberg’s famous operetta THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG without the music? As in Lubitsch’s best work, the perverse constraints of the set-up serve to elevate the emotional stakes and refine the visual grammar. Ramon Novarro stars as Crown Prince Karl Heinrich, a pampered brat whose life only becomes human-sized again when he and his tutor Dr. Jüttner (Jean Hersholt) take in the earthy pleasures of Old Heidelberg. Karl soon falls for Kathi (Norma Shearer), the waitress at a Heidelberg biergarten and a spunky antidote to the foreordained strain of royal responsibility.