In his book "The Lubitsch Touch," Herman G. Weinberg writes: "Before the year's end, Die Puppe (The Doll) came out, a fantasy inspired by themes from E.T.A. Hoffman, from which Offenbach had also drawn for his 'Tales of Hoffman.' Set principally in a doll-maker's boutique (a mechanical doll is brought to life and marries the doll-maker's apprentice), utilizing all manner of camera tricks including the split screen, superimposition, high-speed photography, multiple exposures (there is one shot of twelve images of mouths in a single frame), the film was full of droll effects. It is inventive even before the film proper starts by showing Lubitsch, himself, putting together a miniature set (which turns out to be the scene with which the film begins)--perhaps the only such opening device in screen annals. Here, too, was 'the Lubitsch touch' at work, side by side with the old slapstick of his apprentice days. Amusing, also, were the anticlerical barbs directed at a group of hedonistic monks in a monastery who somehow become involved in the zany proceedings."