Mister Quaker has made his fortune selling oysters. He is so rich that he has a butler whose job is to hold his cigar when he smokes. When his daughter Ossi finds out that a friend of hers, the daughter of the Shoe cream king, is going to marry a count, she flies into a jealous rage and demands to marry an aristocrat on the spot. They decide on Prince Nucki, who loves to party and is in huge debt.

The Oyster Princess was produced three years before Ernest Lubitsch settled in the USA and is one of his major films from his German period. At the age of 27 he had already made several films, but this one was his first international success. This zany and subversive gem has what will come to be known as the Lubitsch Touch, a grotesque and sophisticated comedy.

After composing music for films of Luis Buñuel (Un chien andalou, Terre sans pain and L’Âge d’or) and Fritz Lang (Metropolis, screened at the Auditorium in April 2014), Martin Matalon continues exploring the great classics of silent movies with his scintillating critical look at the American bourgeoisie of the early 1900s. Ars Nova, an ensemble based in Poitiers, will play the soundtrack which was premiered in January 2015 in Valence, under the title “Foxtrot Delirium”.

Co-production with Institut Lumière.

In collaboration with the Biennale Musiques en Scène.

Production Ars Nova ensemble instrumental.Coproduction GMEM, Centre national de création musicale de Marseille.Résidence de création au Lux, scène nationale de Valance.Avec l'aimable autorisation de la Wilhelm Friefrich Murnau Stiftung.