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“HOW WOULD LUBITSCH HAVE DONE IT?” asked a sign in Billy Wilder’s office. After making hit sex comedies and lavish spectacles in his native Germany, Ernst Lubitsch (1982-1947) revolutionized American movies with a sui generis subtlety, visual wit, and sophisticated innuendo – the fabled “Lubitsch Touch” (as definitive a trademark as “Master of Suspense” would be for Hitchcock), inventing the modern movie musical and romantic comedy in the process. Years after Lubitsch’s death, Wilder (an up-close observer as a three-time scenarist for the Master) remarked, “For years we all tried to find the secret of ‘The Lubitsch Touch.’ If we were lucky, we’d sometimes make a film like Lubitsch. Like Lubitsch, not real Lubitsch.” - Film Forum