Ninotchka ***** (1939, Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi) – Classic Movie Review 1856

Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was huge news in the Thirties – the most famous female movie star and the Queen of Hollywood, the Angelina Jolie of her day. As a riposte to the ‘Garbo Talks!’ for the star’s 1930 first talkie Anna Christie, MGM advertised producer-director Ernst Lubitsch’s famous sparkling 1939 movie with the sell-line ‘Garbo Laughs!’, which was dreamt up before the script that was later written round developing that single idea. Worried that Americans would have trouble with the title, MGM also advertised ‘Don’t pronounce it – see it!’.

Though naturally, in truth, Garbo had laughed on screen before, this was her first actual comedy as such and certainly her first film full of dialogue that was worth laughing over. With deliciously cynical lines that haven’t faded at all, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch’s playfully witty screenplay is based on the original story by Melchior Lengyel.

The satire of Garbo as the severe, drably dressed, ice-maiden Russian commissar Ninotchka arriving in Paris on official business and meeting and confronting handsome but idle rich capitalist playboy Leon (Melvyn Douglas) perhaps inevitably creaks just a little a bit now. Inevitably, the stern Russian woman soon finds herself attracted to the man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.

A little creaky it may be, but the movie remains a classic sophisticated comedy of international manners, largely dreamt up, realised and performed by middle Europeans sheltering in America from Hitler and the Nazis. That’s all the more poignant as it was released as the world (though not the Americans of course) was going to war.

It is a cornucopia of witty gags, cheeky political jokes and perfect performances, with the two stars on finest form and ideally matched, Garbo melting from chilly intensity to warm playfulness at the prompting of Douglas’s jaunty turn. There are good roles in support too for Sig Ruman (Iranoff), Alexander Granach, (Kopalski) Felix Bressart (Buljanoff), Bela Lugosi (Razinin), Ina Claire (Swana), Gregory Gaye (Rakonin), Rolfe Sedan (Hotel Manager), Richard Carle, Edwin Maxwell, George Tobias, Dorothy Adams, Charles Judels, Frank Reicher, Edwin Stanley and Peggy Moran.

There were four Oscar nominations (for best picture, actress, original story, screenplay), but alas no wins.

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