LH wrote that he always seemed to be out of the country whenever the NFT showed the film, but maintained that:

‘...it has been in my mind and my heart since the Sunday morning in 1949 when Cambridge’s Film Society, a thousand strong, rose to it as one man and gave it a deafening ovation.’

This was fully seventeen years after its initial release, and one feels that he was probably at a better age then to appreciate its wit and sophistication.  Whilst he admitted that the famous ‘Lubitsch touch’ deserted the director as often as not, Trouble in Paradise was –

‘…vintage champagne from beginning to end.’

Halliwell drew inevitable comparisons with Ninotchka (also a romantic comedy concerning stolen jewels, again directed by Lubitsch), but maintained that that film was unbalanced by its message, whereas –

‘Trouble in Paradise is perfection itself, and content to have no message at all.’

In the fifth edition of his Film Guide, LH put this movie at number two in his top ten list of all-time favourites, just behind Citizen Kane –

‘It is all as sweetly toothsome as ever it was, and should be sought out and savoured.’