129. Ninotchka (1939)

Directed By Ernst Lubitsch

Synopsis

Ninotchka is a Soviet trade agent trying to sell some jewels to the French when she falls in love with the paramour of the former owner of the jewels, before the revolution.

Review

Well, Garbo is starring in a comedy! As one of the taglines for it said "Garbo Laughs!"... the other tagline says "Don't Pronounce it, see it!"... in a long tradition of Americans revelling in their own short comings (like renaming Harry Potter's first book Sorcerer's Stone because no one would buy a book with Philosopher written on the cover). Actually Garbo is quite good in it, partly because she spends the first half of the film acting like a Bolshevik robot of some kind, which really suits her.

Garbo cannot, unfortunately laugh in a convincing way, it looks a bit forced, but she only has to do it seldomly in the film to satisfy the slogan. The film is as interesting for it's comedy as it is for its politics. For an age when so many films were terribly callous in their political stance, this one manages to give a pretty balanced picture of pre and post-revolutionary Russia. There are no good guys here, the Soviets are a brutal dictatorship but have achieved a great degree of equality, while the aristocracy is composed of horrible snobs who kept the people enslaved. You get the idea that the situation didn't change so much, only aristocracy was substituted by the party.

And it is a very funny film, credit has to go to the three Bolshevik agents that show up right at the beginning of the film and that serve as a kind of comic relief to the more serious romance going on with Garbo. The film is witty, and makes a lot of fun of politics, stuff which you wouldn't really think as great comedic material, like being sent to Siberia, being killed because someone didn't like your report or taking 15 years to make a 5 year plan. But here the unPCness of the film actually helps it, mainly because it is funny, and good comedy can be as unPC as it wants because it mocks a bad situation, it doesn't try to make us empathise with it. But despite all my talk about politics, it is a very funny film and that is why you should see it. Get it form Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:


Released in 1939 in the United States, the movie was released during World War II in Europe, where it became a great success. It was, however, banned in the Soviet Union and its satellites.

Ninotchka, on her arrival at the train station, updating her fellow countrymen about latest news in Moscow: "The last mass trials were a success: there will be fewer, but better Russians."

No film of Ninotchka, but here is a short 1929 silent newsreel of Garbo crying after leaving Sweden...: