Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

History can set difficult challenges for film makers, like, for example, dropping earth-shattering events in the middle of production and thus turning works with contemporary settings into period pieces. It requires a great deal of talent behind and in front of the camera for a film to overcome such adversity. Ninotchka, the 1939 comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, had all that and not only became popular and critically acclaimed, but also earned a reputation as one of the finest and most celebrated comedies of Classic Hollywood.

The plot is set in late 1930s Paris, a city which, together with France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland, in September 1939—two months before the film’s premiere—became involved in the Second World War. The producers address the issue with a semi-ironic opening title that reminds the audience that what they are about to see is Paris’ recent peacetime past.

We are introduced to three Soviet trade officials – Iranoff (played by Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (played by Felix Bressart) and Kopalski (played by Alexander Granach) – who have arrived in France to sell a valuable set of jewels confiscated by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution in order to finance the country’s modernisation. They are spotted by Count Alexis Rakonin (played by Gregory Gaye), a hotel waiter and former aristocrat who gives notice to a fellow White Russian émigré, Grand Duchess Swana (played by Ina Claire), who used to own the jewels. Her French boyfriend, the aristocratic playboy Count Léon d’Agoult (Melvyn Douglas), volunteers to help her retrieve the jewels and his actions lead to an exhausting lawsuit.

Unhappy with the lack of progress by the trio of officials, their boss Commissar Razinin (played by Bela Lugosi) sends another official to supervise them. It is Nina Ivanovna “Ninotchka” Yakushova (played by Greta Garbo), a cold and rigid official whose task is to win the lawsuit. By chance, she meets Count d’Agoult who almost immediately starts to flirt with her, but his attempts at seduction appear to go nowhere until Ninotchka, subjected to the glamour, luxury and relaxed atmosphere of the French capital, begins to fall under his spell. Count d’Agoult, on the other hand, begins to fall in love with Ninotchka, and that complicates his relationship with the Grand Duchess.

Ninotchka originated as a rather simple idea by executives at MGM, which was the top Hollywood studio at the time. Greta Garbo, the biggest Hollywood star at the time, had never before appeared in a “proper” comedy and the film could be easily advertised with the words “Garbo laughs” just as Anna Christie, her 1930 sound film debut, was advertised with the words “Garbo talks”. The chosen script for the comedy was developed by Hungarian writer Melchior Lengyel who had the original concept in 1937. His script, which was quite critical of the Soviet Union, represented something relatively rare for Hollywood, whose many writers were either Communists, Soviet sympathisers or considered Stalin’s regime the lesser of two evils that were threatening Europe at the time. Lengyel takes very good aim at the Soviet Union, which was at the time going through one of the darkest periods of its history and, among other things, references the horrors of the ongoing Great Purge.

The anti-Soviet credentials of Ninotchka are further validated by scenes that take place in Ninotchka’s Moscow apartment, a crummy little place she is forced to share with two other women under the watchful eye of a neighbour who works as an informer for the secret police. In one scene, Ninotchka even points to similarities between Communism and Nazism, something that became quite relevant after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But Lengyel’s script isn’t without its nuances and doesn’t succumb to cheap anti-Communist propaganda. The only true villain of the film is not the faceless Soviet system, but the flesh-and-blood character of Swana, an aristocrat who, when talking with Ninotchka as her ideological enemy and romantic rival, displays the same kind of arrogance and cruelty that made the impoverished Soviet masses embrace Bolshevism and support the Revolution.

But, in the end, political commentary was something the audience at the time cared little about and something that most viewers would now ignore, probably enjoying Ninotchka as a great display of talents. One of the biggest talents was Ernst Lubitsch, the German director famous for his sophisticated comedies and legendary “Lubitsch touch”. In this film he handled MGM’s resources very well. He recreated Paris and Moscow in the studio with ease and made the plot flow naturally, helped by Lengyel’s brilliant dialogue and great actors who excelled even in small parts.

Garbo, for whom Ninotchka would be her penultimate film, delivered what could be described as the best performance of her career. She portrayed a woman who began as a rigid caricature of a totalitarian system, only to gradually discover her femininity and individuality. She had great help in Melvyn Douglas, an actor playing a character who, like Ninotchka, goes through a transformation; he begins as a callous, overconfident playboy, then helplessly falls in love and even starts adopting some of Ninotchka’s ideology before proving himself worthy of her love. Douglas and Garbo had great chemistry and it also helped that Ina Claire was something of Garbo’s romantic rival in real life, having had a widely publicised affair with famous silent era star John Gilbert.

Perfectly directed, well-written and confidently acted, Ninotchka represented one of the most celebrated Hollywood films made in the annus mirabilis of 1939. Its reputation is deservedly high, despite a somewhat clumsy and not particularly convincing way to obtain a happy ending for the protagonists and audience. Ninotchka proved to be a great success and MGM tried to repeat it by pairing Douglas and Garbo in Two-Faced Woman, a film that became a flop and convinced Garbo to end her film career.

Ninotchka disappeared from cinemas later during the war, after the USA and Soviet Union became allies and anti-Soviet films suddenly became inconvenient. When the allies became bitter rivals in the Cold War, Ninotchka was rediscovered and, among other things, was remade as the popular Broadway musical Silk Stockings, later adapted into a 1955 film starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Although not exactly the last film in Garbo’s career, Ninotchka earned a reputation as the swan song for one of the greatest goddesses of cinema and one of the great films of Hollywood’s first Golden Age.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)