Magnus Stifter | Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) / 1916

how to be a man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Martin Jørgensen and Louis Levy (screenplay), Magnus Stifter (director) Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) / 1916

 

By the time Asta Nielsen made the German film, Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) she had already starred in some of her greatest films—including a couple I have reviewed in these pages, Jugend und Tollheit and Zapata’s Gang—many others of which have been lost. She had already ceased working with her director husband Urban Gad and would divorce him in 1919. And she was now an international superstar with a salary of $80,000 per film, this work being financed primarily by family money through Freddy Wingardh, whom she would marry in 1919.

 

     Like so many of her films, in which she played a gender fluid individual, the script by Martin Jørgensen and Louis Levy required her to appear in two different drag roles, involving other characters in drag as well. But more important than simple crossdressing, this film asked serious questions about male and female roles in courtship and in marriage, and questioned the notion of male superiority.

      Nielsen’s character Lis is a somewhat spoiled daughter of a wealthy Danish businessman, who evidently has arranged her marriage with another well-to-do family, the von Dobberns, represented by two elderly sisters who equally dote on their beloved charge, Philip.

      Philip, however—played by Ludwig Trautmann, a man whom critic Pamelia Hutchinson describes as and openly “gay German film star and matinee idol”—although eager to meet Lis, is timid and terribly proper in his manners. If nothing else is the antithesis of what the romantically inclined Lis—who has gleaned many of her notions of love through the pictures of a dance publication—imagines in a fiancée. He arrives at her house draped in a riding blanket and two large scarves as if to protect himself not only from the cold, but from any waft of a sweet scent that might reach his obviously allergic nose.

      Although outwardly she is polite, when he’s looking in the other direction, she comically sticks out her tongue at him, grimaces, cringes, and inwardly groans. How could her father (played by director Magnus Stifter) have chosen such a man for her? While she is passionate and impetuous—intensely kissing her dog and soldier doll when not putting her mouth to the lips of her picture book images of the dancing males—Philip, put simply, is a good-looking priss, if not a sissy.

      She begins, with simple tasks, to make him over, teaching him first how to smoke a cigarette and, a bit more coyly but no less insistent, how to kiss. To demonstrate how very backward this young man is, the first time she gives him permission to kiss her, he grabs her hand. Immediately, she shows him to her lips!

       She further determines to indoctrinate through a more careful schooling process. She takes him to Paris, secretly ordering up a shared train carriage—not something a young unmarried girl could be imagined to do, and which almost scandalizes Philip—and more nefariously arranges for them to have adjoining hotel suites. His passivity is the only thing that allows this unthinkable behavior to proceed.

       And just as quickly, she orders up a male formal tuxedo which she intends to wear, with the help of her servant, who is forced to explain how to put the articles of clothing on, one by one. Evidently, she feels that if she can take him on the town as a male companion, she can put him at ease and demonstrate how the male of her dreams should behave.

      But before that even, she plops a woman’s bonnet on her fiancé’s head and proceeds to play the male role, providing him in lessons in how to attract a woman, how to flirt, and even seduce her, Philip almost giggling in the pleasure of being able to play the bashful woman who is the recipient of the attentions paid.

      Even more interesting is the sense of his immediate delight when he first sees her as the male counterpoint of himself. First of all, Nielsen, as she has made clear previously and will again in her Hamlet, presents herself as an absolutely stunningly beautiful male. But we also sense, in Trautmann’s smiles and sudden openness, that he much happier to be able to accompany a male to dinner and opera than a female.

       Within moments of their arrival, something even more startling happens as Lis entrances two females in the next box so successfully that they suddenly are enthused to join their neighbors for drinks, both women quickly choosing to sit on Lis’ knees as opposed to Philip’s. She is more successful as a male than he could ever be, and he perceives it, as does she, quickly asking one of the women to attend to her friend. She does so, but comes back quickly to join her friend on Lis’ lap.

        One of these women is apparently spoken for, a man arriving to reclaim his girlfriend or even wife, and inviting Philip to join them as the other woman’s partner. For a moment Lis is left alone. And she realizes that now she is, in fact, quite drunk; and that she hasn’t actually enjoyed the role-playing she’s taken on. For all of her excellent lessons, she is the one now left alone. Somehow, she stumbles back to the hotel.

       Philip soon returns to reclaim Lis, the others with him trying to pull him back into their cultural orb. Seeing her gone, however, he cries out, “Where is my fiancée?” not only confusing his new friends but convincing them that their friend is not quite well, confused most certainly, calling another man his fiancée like that. They comfort him and try to calm him down.

       Finding her back in the room, he is relieved and finally is able to proffer her some advice about how to rid herself of a hangover. But before they can even accommodate to the new shift in their relationship, they receive a message that her father is in town, planning to immediately make a visit. How can she explain the fact that they are sharing a hotel room? It would be more than a scandal and would certainly result in a cancellation of their marriage plans.

        Quick thinking Lis demands that Philip receive her father, telling him that she has gone for a visit with her aunts. She quickly sends out for another male garb, a wig and different clothes in order become Philip’s male friend staying in the next room on a visit.

 

       At first, the crossdressing Lis convinces even her father. But because of his dog’s attention to the young man’s room, as if he knows his beloved Lis is within, and through subtle clues, her father begins to suspect something, entering into the young man’s chamber and peeking into the bedroom to see his own daughter rearranging her male clothing for her next encounter with him and Philip.

        Demanding an explanation, and perceiving how his daughter has arranged everything, the father now plans to take Philip under his wing and show him how to properly train a woman to behave. He demands Philip write a letter pretending that he will be meeting another woman in the restaurant that evening in a private booth. Dropping in on the floor where Lis will surely see it, the two await her reaction.

        She is now angered, hurt, and more than a little distressed. Dressing up this time as a waiter, she plans to catch Philip in his dinner tête-à-tête. Philip and her father, meanwhile, dress up the butler as the woman Philip will meet. With some glitches, this new plan works perfectly, Lis growing angry and scolding Philip in his female companion’s presence before coming to her father in tears and despair—a situation easily corrected when Philip’s female friend pulls off his wig. 

       Philip and Lis are married, and this time on their honeymoon get-away he takes back his male priority by purchasing the train tickets himself and booking the hotel room, making sure they are both to be double occupancy.

        The numerous crossdressing incidents and the farce-like moments of this comic work, particularly given Nielsen’s energized performance, are wonderful. Those who have seen Ernst Lubitsch’s I Don’t Want to Be a Man of a couple of years later, moreover, will recognize the influence of Danish director Stifter’s work.

        But Lubitsch’s film is far more radical and profound in the fact that it does end with the normative paternal lesson to females who attempt to question their gender roles and marital relationships, and even more importantly, truly explores not only gender pretense but the possibility of same-sex love, just as previously Nielsen’s Zapata’s Band had.

 

Los Angeles, May 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).