The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch: Biography

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Cast / Credits / Reviews (From the Turner Classic Movies Database)

Detailed Plot Summary and Description of Key
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Great review from Combustible Celluloid

Ernst Lubitsch used Laszlo Aladar's play The Honest Finder as a springboard for one of his most delightful early-1930s Paramount confections, Trouble in Paradise. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play a pair of Parisian thieves, both disguised as nobility. Both decide
to rob lovely perfume company executive Kay Francis; Marshall gets a job as Francis' confidential secretary, while Hopkins installs herself as the woman's typist. Love rears its head, forcing Marshall to choose between marriage with Francis and a fast getaway with Hopkins.

Recognized by one of his former victims (Edward Everett Horton), Marshall is turned in for punishment to the chairman of the board of Francis' cosmetics firm (C. Aubrey Smith)--who is himself exposed as a crook by the wily Marshall. As the film fades, Marshall and Hopkins are back together, still picking one another's pocket and loving every minute of it. Filled with marvelous throwaway gags and sophisticated innuendo, Trouble in Paradise was described by one critic as "as close to perfection
as anything I have ever seen in the movies." -- Hal Erickson