AllMovie

The 1930 Hollywood feature Laughter, which starred Nancy Carroll and Fredric March, was also lensed in two foreign-language versions. Both the German Die Manner um Lucie and the French Rive Gauche were directed by Alexander Korda. Liane Haid, Walter Rilla and Oskar Karlweis star in this Teutonic spin on the original Harry D'Arrast-Douglas Doty screenplay (D'Arrast also directed the English-language Laughter). Liane assumes the Nancy Carroll role as a Follies dancer who marries likeable millionaire Karlweis. He denies her nothing, not even an extramarital fling with composer Rilla. The complications that follow are both sophisticated and logical, with the characters behaving like human beings rather than French-farce stick figures. We'll let the auteur theorists argue over whether Alexander Korda's direction was any more accomplished than Harry D'Arrast's.