Ernst Lubitsch's I Don't Want to Be a Man is a film ripe for scholastic rediscovery: it is a subtly subversive gender-bender about a young woman who poses as a man in order to live a more libertine life but falls in love with her caretaker. That the caretaker is male is not surprising. That they share a "same-sex" kiss is shocking (for the year it was released, I mean). That the film and its characters don't seem to pass judgment on the "same-sex" couple is downright stunning. The humor in their relationship comes less from their gender hijinks and more from the fact that a free-spirited young woman and an uptight, prissy man fall in love. And then, after getting fabulously drunk, the two are accidentally deposited in the other person's house by their carriage-driver. Honestly, the film could have worked perfectly fine without the last minute reveal of the young woman's gender. But though the film is potentially fascinating for historians, I fear that it would try the patience of modern viewers. Setting aside the obviously ludicrous moral that men have a harsher lot in life than women, Ossi Oswalda plays the part of the female lead so childishly that it borders on infantilism. The way she responds to and provokes people in the first third of the film is akin to a toddler knocking over their baby bottle just to get a reaction from their mother. Although this does lead to one funny scene where she throws treats from her second-story window into the outstretched mouths of nearly a dozen young suitors, their faces wide and expectant like seals begging for fish from their trainers.
6/10
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