THE WILDCAT

A soldier known to be a great womanizer, Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann), is sent to Tossenstein Fort as a punishment. On the way, he meets the beautiful Rischka (Pola Negri), the daughter of a brigand, with whom he immediately falls in love. On his arrival, the commander of the fort (Victor Janson) assigns him the task of a punitive expedition against Rischka’s gang, who surrender after several skirmishes, while Alexis is awarded the hand of the commander’s daughter, Lilli. Alexis and Rischka are disconsolate, but a surprising encounter between the two young women brings order back into the folds of love… The First World War has just ended, and Lubitsch has created a very modern and grotesque work, a hilarious farce about war where battles (snowball fights), chases and seductions follow one another at a great pace, while the whole landscape contributes to the surreal and fantastic atmosphere in which the film is immersed. The version presented here can be considered as the restored original: the film negative, kept at the Berlin Film Archive, has been completed on the basis of censorship documents found in the meantime. The restoration work, coordinated by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, was carried out by the ‘L’immagine ritrovata’ laboratory of the Cineteca di Bologne, while the musical score was composed for the occasion by maestro Marco Dalpane.