Ninotchka

Greta Garbo's penultimate film, and the last of my little festival, is her best film, the classic Ninotchka, one of the many excellent films released in 1939, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder, among others. While the phrase "romantic comedy" is toxic today, there was a time when they mean greatness, as it does here, also being a film that lays waste to Stalinism.

We are in Paris, before the war, and three Russian envoys arrive. They rationalize taking the "royal suite," despite it being against everything they stand for. They are there to sell jewels purloined from a Russian countess (Ina Claire) who happens to be living in Paris. Her paramour (Melvyn Douglas), himself a nobleman who doesn't have too much money, tries to negotiate for the jewels, by mostly corrupting the three Russians on the many fine things Paris has to offer. The film becomes a kind of enactment of the song, "How you gonna keep down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?"

The three Russians (Iranoff, Buljanoff, and Kolansky, which we will have memorized by the end of the film) wire back to Moscow that they should split the take with the Countess, and this earns the arrival of a stern envoy, played by Garbo. She's no nonsense, immune to the charms of Paris, even though she does want to see the Eiffel Tower on a technical basis. She bumps into Douglas, who assists her, and by the end of the evening he is in love. So is she, sort of, even if she describes the attraction as chemical: "Your general appearance is not distasteful."  When she finds out that Douglas is the proxy for the Countess, she leaves, but he pursues her, determined to win her over and make her laugh. He finally does, by unintentionally leaning back in his chair and falling over.

This results in gales of laughter from Garbo, hence the tag line, "Garbo Laughs." It's true, but not really significant, since she laughed in other films, such as Queen Christina and Camille. But this is a laugh for the ages, perhaps the most famous in all cinema, and the scene is ubiqitous in film documentaries. In any event, it loosens her up and she falls hard for Douglas, though politics keeps them apart.

In addition to the delightful performance by Garbo, who is iron in the first half, putty in the second, and the debonair Douglas, this film is just brimming with pleasure. Just watch her face as she tries Champagne for thei first time--it's genius. Lubitsch, who was a big name in his day but isn't as well known today as he should be, shows what was called the "Lubitsch touch." Wilder and his partner Charles Brackett wrote a typically-Wilderian script, with lots of wit and a closing shot that would prefigure Wilder's own films.

Mostly, Ninotchka is a good-humored kick in the pants to the Soviets. They are depicted as authoritarian wet blankets, until they experience Western wonders, and they end up seduced. The film was not shown in Russia, natch, and was even withdrawn in the U.S. after the start of the war, when we were allies. Some of the quotes:

"The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians."

"A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years."

"Hello! Comrade Kasabian? No, I am sorry. He hasn't been with us for six months. He was called back to Russia and was investigated. You can get further details from his widow."

As noted previously, this was Garbo's second to last film. She made a film called Two-Faced Woman that bombed, and after that, though she didn't officially retire, she backed out of films and became increasingly harder to approach. Finally she did retire, and lived in New York City, where sightings of her were like sightings of Bigfoot. She was not a recluse--she had her own social circle, but she became legendary for her aloofness, which goes all the way back to her early films, when she wanted "to be alone."