"I still remember the day of the funeral," Billy Wilder said of Ernst Lubitsch. "After the ceremony William Wyler and I walked silently to our car. Finally, I said, just to say something to break the silence, 'No more Lubitsch.' To which Wyler replied, 'Worse than that — No more Lubitsch filmes.' How right we were. For 20 years since then we were all trying to find the secret of the 'Lubitsch touch.' Nothing doing. Oh if we were lucky we sometimes managed a few feet of film here and there in our work that momentarily sparkled like Lubitsch. Like Lubitsch, not real Lubitsch. His art is lost. That most elegant of screen magicians took his secret with him."