In terms of «genres», the lingua franca of Hollywood, perhaps the only place in America where the Utopian dream of becoming a great melting pot of races came true, was capable of blending and transforming even the most disparate Old World traditions […]. Like Chaplin, Stroheim, and many others, Lubitsch was quick to learn this lingua franca, this Esperanto of collective imaginary and show business. In a certain sense, Lubitsch was the most ready of all for this sort of camouflage. We can see it in his first Hollywood film Rosita […], but we can also see it already in his last film made in Berlin, starring Pola Negri: Die flamme for which he received partial funding from Paramount. This unusually dark story of a call girl who meets with true love too late, was shot in Germany but set in Paris in the late 1800s. With an atmosphere of gas lights and cafe tables, the film vaguely recalls Cezanne.

Guido Fink, Ernst Lubitsch, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1977