A timid young man buys a doll to pose as his wife, thus avoiding having to marry. The only problem is that the doll is a live woman.

 

Ernst Lubitsch gives us a surreal comedy, we have a woman posing as a doll posing as a woman. The Doll is a fairy tale for grown-ups and presents itself in an amusing burlesque style, where the comic lies both in the costumes and performances, as well as in the amusingly painted sets, a kind of response to the gloomy winds of expressionism that was beginning to dominate German screens.

 

With the sarcastic humour, a good pinch of irony and skillful insinuations – common in his works – Lubitsch “fires his revolving machine gun” on the society of the time, reaching the greed of the Church, the objectification of women, marriage as an institution and aristocracy.