KQED ARTS (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Film scholar Joseph McBride, a fixture in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University for the last several years, releases his latest big dig into the Golden Age of Hollywood, How Did Lubitsch Do It? (Columbia University Press) this Tuesday, June 26. The author of acclaimed tomes on the lives and work of Frank Capra, John Ford and Orson Welles, McBride has a historian’s knowledge of the peculiarities and power plays of the hierarchal studio system and a critic’s eye for analyzing the philosophy, structure and techniques of Lubitsch’s movies that his admirers like Billy Wilder emulated but never duplicated.
McBride visits the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael on Sunday, July 1, to introduce a late-afternoon screening of Trouble in Paradise (1932) and discuss the great director’s methods and mastery.