Marriage Circle, The (1924) Rating: Starring: Monte Blue, Adolphe Menjou, Marie Prevost, Creighton Hale, Florence Vidor Director: Ernst Lubitsch Category: Comedy, Classic Studio: Image Ent. Subtitles: [None] Length: 85 mins     The tone is set from the opening scene as Lubitsch effortlessly sets up the duality of one perfectly happy marriage contrasted with another couple in a perpetual state of grimly endured misalliance. "The day starts late but gloriously in the home of Professor Josef Stock," announces a title.A desultory Adolphe Menjou gets dressed, only to discover that there are holes in his socks.Menjou reacts with what even then was his trademarked frozen sang-froid, a dead non-expression but without his customary lightness in the eyes and around the mouth. Stock's wife, Mizzi, among other failings, is a slovenly housekeeper.Mizzi convinces herself that she's in love with Dr. Braun, the husband of an old friend.Braun loves his wife, but can't very well resist when a beautiful bit of baggage like Mizzi drops into his lap.Stock, nobody's fool, hires a detective to follow his wife and gather the incriminating evidence so he can get the divorce he prays for. All the complications are rigorously worked out in the script by Paul Bern (and an uncredited Hans Kraly).A garden party sequence, when Mizzi lures Dr. Braun into a meeting, then tosses away her scarf in a burst of willfulness, carries the perceptible thrill of a forbidden affair.Lubitsch knew that in an atmosphere of hushed whispers and discretion, a kiss can carry nearly as much of an erotic charge as consummation.