Madame DuBarry

Ernst Lubitsch, 1919, for UFA: Pola Negri as Jeanne Bécu, the milliner who becomes Louis XV's last mistress and dies on the guillotine. Emil Jannings is the king. The French Revolution as a backstage drama — bedrooms, then streets. Lubitsch, still in Germany, already directing like a man who knows a close-up can be a coup. Released in the U.S. as Passion. It is the film that brought him to Hollywood, and Negri with him.