From my period of historical, period costume films, I would have to cite the three most extraordinary Carmen, Madame Dubarry, and Anne Boleyn. In my opinion the importance of these films lies in the fact that they completely distinguished themselves from the Italian school, which at that time was quite fashionable and near to Lyrical Opera. I tried to clear all references to opera out of my films and to bring my historical characters onto a more human level – the smaller, more intimate differences were just as important to me as mass movements, and I tried to blend the two.

E. Lubistch, Brief an Herman G. Weinberg, 10.7.1947, in Prinzler/Patalas, Lubitsch und seine Filme, München, Heyne Verlag, 1992

Pola Negri is of extraordinary beauty still today, and furthermore no actor at her level could be found today for Emil Jannings’ role. And the delicate decadence of the chosen Potsdam, with its gardens and castles. It lets the sweetness of life in a pre-Revolutionary world be deeply felt in respect to the actual historical buildings in Versailles that appear quite massive and domineering compared to latent homosexual Grande Federico’s lovely but bored Rococo. We can thus only rejoice in the fact that Lubitsch shot his film in Potsdam instead of Versailles.

Helma Sanders-Brahms in H.H.Prinzler/E.Patalas, ed. by. Lubitsch, München-Luzern, Heyne Verlag, 1984