Erotikon

Mauritz Stiller's sophisticated comedy of manners — a film so influential that Ernst Lubitsch reportedly watched it multiple times before developing his own famous "touch." A distinguished entomologist is so absorbed in studying the mating habits of insects that he fails to notice his wife is conducting her own romantic experiments with two eager suitors. Stiller treats the resulting quadrangle with the same detached, amused objectivity the professor brings to his bugs, creating a wickedly funny satire of bourgeois marriage and desire. The film's casual Continental attitude toward infidelity was years ahead of Hollywood, and its elegant visual style — all drawing rooms, opera boxes, and meaningful glances — helped establish the template for the sophisticated romantic comedy that would dominate the 1930s.