“Ernst Lubitsch’s first cinematographic works were burlesque type comedies. Most of these, which were shot during the war have nearly all been lost. Whether he is the main character or not, these films have both practical gags and psychological humour. T. Binh has written that the particularity of the Lubitschian burlesque is that it gets over nevrosis by means of an affirmation of vital energy, in a compensation for errors through an exaggeration of the qualities, and of frustration through the will to live life: the sexual sphere or, as the ethical code of the period said, sensual sphere was the catalyst for these truthful ‘explosions’ – as happens with Chaplin. Lubitsch himself remembers in a letter to his biographer Weinberg, that when he noticed how much the public liked Ossi Oswalda, whose debut he had favoured by having her in his film, he had no difficulty whatsoever in giving her the main part in his stead and to remain on the other side of the cine-camera. Ich möchte kein Mann sein is one of these Lustspiel which has recently been found and rendered for viewing. In this playful extravaganza, the itchy main character – nearly an alter ego of the director, appears in an open-minded ‘Hosenrolle’, so preceeding many of her colleagues, who in the following years, have not always been able to tackle transvestites in the same audacious manner”.  (Vittorio Martinelli)

“Curt Goetz, the tutor, is dressed in a pair of trousers which are a little bit too short. Was the water deep perhaps? He seems to be walking on stilts.
[…] His favourite, Ossi Oswalda, a girl disguised as a man, is coaxed into not being so fussy: ‘Remember that you are a man!’. Her reply is of course ‘If you say so’.
The tutor kisses his favourite in a dance hall, unaware of her real identity, that his protégée is really a woman: he thinks she is kissing a man. […] After the night out the tutor sleeps in Ossi’s bed, and Ossi in turn sleeps in the tutor’s bed. In what period is the film set? Both the typical serenity, almost magic of the years preceding 1914, and that certain carelessness of the period of inflation can be felt. There are Victorian hairstyles, but also slim feminine silhouettes, the stress and the feverish climate of the 20’s.
The film is set in Berlin. What are the doors of her apartment, the entrances of her building if not possible entrances to the world, rapid means of escape towards a glittery and feverish outside world? The streets and boulevards are nothing else but connections between one place and another. The mass and the anonymous: a protective cloak for the extraordinary, for the abnormality. The numerous stations in Berlin are used to continually serve up hundreds of people who arrive in Berlin, and they therefore guarantee eternal circulation. Progress. It must never stop for whatever reason. Words of Lubitsch. Brecht’s Mahagonny, the city of the nets: ‘Look very carefully / so that any action may be made possible here’”. (Ulrich Kurowski)