DAN’S PAPERS -- Well, despite working on other books, including the recently published Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra, and teaching film at San Francisco State he’s back already with another humungous volume, How Did Lubitsch Do It?, a much-needed critical appraisal of one of the most important directors in cinema history, Ernst Lubitsch. McBride, who even traveled to Germany to watch the silent films he made there before coming to America, provides a brilliant shine to his fading star.
“When I show Lubitsch films to my students at San Francisco State University, they love them. The struggle is to get people to go to them,” McBride says. “... Students don’t laugh enough about anything, in my experience, but students to whom I show Lubitsch films find them delightful. They certainly are surprised by how sexually advanced and provocative his films are.”