Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
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What critics compared Trouble in Paradise to
But really, Focus is more about the sensation of having your wallet lifted by a pickpocket with nimble fingers; as Herbert Marshall tells Miriam Hopkins in 1932’s Trouble In Paradise , the definitive romance-among-thieves comedy, after she takes his wallet, “You tickled me.”
When it turns out she’s in the game herself it leads to a couple of amusing scenes including one that–for film buffs with long memories–may recall the “meet cute” in “Trouble in Paradise” (1932).
My first suggestion would be to check out Ernest Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise,” a 1932 comedy that asked and answered that exact question.
Being both beautiful people, it only makes sense that they would wind up in bed together after picking each other’s pockets (in an unearned allusion to the great Ernest Lubitsch’s 1932 screwball gem Trouble in Paradise).
A romantic caper stocked with con artists, good looks but little sizzle, Focus is no Trouble in Paradise, House of Games or The Grifters.
This comic thriller begins as a twist on the classic crime romance “Trouble in Paradise”: two smooth grifters, the veteran Nicky (Will Smith) and the novice Jess (Margot Robbie), pick each other’s pockets and thus seal a partnership made in heaven.
There are whiffs of Preston Sturges in the strong, willful female characters and rumbustious physical and interpersonal comedy, as well as the element of the virtuoso scammers scamming other scammers hailing toward both Sturges’ “The Lady Eve” and the definitive comedy clockwork of Ernst Lubitsch and Samson Raphaelson’s “Trouble in Paradise.”
To find its ancient equivalents, you would consult Ernst Lubitsch’s comedies of the ’30s and ’40s (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be), made in Hollywood but set in Europe, and the ’40s and ’50s dramas directed by Max Ophuls, particularly La Ronde and Letter From an Unknown Woman.
One brief romantic scene between two pickpockets winks at the classic comedy “Trouble in Paradise,” with none of its breathless eroticism or dramatic stakes.