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DVD Ninotchka
Ah, those fun-loving Communists! In Ninotchka three Soviets make their way to Paris to sell off imperial jewels to raise money to buy tractors for the USSR. When Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), former owner of the jewels, discovers what's happening, she deploys her lover Leon (Melvyn Douglas) to recover her gems. He starts a court proceeding while seducing the three bumbling Soviets with the luxuries of capitalistic life. The delay of the sale is noticed in Moscow, and Comrade Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) is dispatched to Paris to settle the matter. Soon after arrival, she meets Leon, who is charmed by her severe, uptight manner and her stunning beauty ("I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last 15 years"), and he sets about wooing her, despite her disbelief in love (it's merely a "chemical reaction," she dourly informs him). Romance, jealousy, and capitalistic frivolity ensue.
When this film was released in 1939, it was advertised as "Garbo laughs," as it was her first and only comedy. The film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is amusing not only for its story line, but also for its dated look at early Communism (Ninotchka keeps a photo of a stern-looking Lenin by her bedside, although she feels uncomfortable doing so in a room that costs 2,000 francs a night, the price of a cow back home). The satirical image of the young Communist fighting against corrupt Western ways seems somewhat idealistic today but nonetheless provided levity during the shaky political times of the film's release. Viewers may be jarred by the casual "Heil Hitler" greeting of a couple at the train station, but overall this film holds up as one of Lubitsch's masterpieces and a lighter glimpse of the mysterious Garbo. --Jenny Brown
Fans of the great Greta Garbo argue over whether QUEEN CHRISTINA (1933) or CAMILLE (1936) has her finest performance. It is a tough call. How about a dead-heat tie and owning both film masterpieces on DVD? But no one considers what her most ENJOYABLE performance is, the film she seemed to have the most fun making. That would surely be Ernst Lubitsch's wonderful NINOTCHKA (1939, MGM). She gets to play two different roles, one serious drama and one lighthearted comedy under master Lubitsch's perfect touch. And she gets to say dialogue by masters Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch. I'd quote dialogue, but every line is just hilarious perfection.
We are mostly in Paris in 1939 as we meet three nutty Russian visitors (Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, and Sig Rumann) checking into a fancy hotel, saying that is what Lenin would do. It doesn't seem to matter to the writers or Lubitsch why they are in Paris, only that it is some sort of secret mission that is moving too slowly and seems to involve stolen diamonds. The city holds too much glittering romance and wealth for the poor Russians to get their work done. Lubitsch has his trademark fascination with doors. We keep focusing on them closed and squeals inside. Watch the cigarette girl get great laughs behind a closed door, then bring two of her friends back with more trays and boxes! Just when you think the gag can't be topped, Lubitsch and his writers have Garbo's Ninotchka ask for a cigarette and three girls enter the suite. Ninotchka says, "Comrades, you must have been smoking a lot."
Ninotchka has been sent to Paris to find out why the mission is taking so long. The three Russians meet her at the train station, and she spends the next several reels in a cold and humorless vein, all business. ("The last mass trials were a great success. There will be fewer, but better Russians.") Soon Ninotchka meets one Leon (Melvyn Douglas at his very best under Lubitsch's magic touch) on a night street. She has a giant map and is looking for the Eiffel Tower. (Leon: "Good heavens, is that thing lost again?") She wants to know hardware facts and figures. Leon moves her fingers between the tower and where they are now on the map (Ninotchka: "I am only interested in the distance between two points. Must you flirt?""Well, I don't have to, but I enjoy it.""Suppress it.")
With a flawless blending of romance, drama, and comic wit, NINOTCHKA cuts back and forth between Ninotchka with Leon and with the three Russians, who become like a cheering chorus for the romance. Billed as the movie where "GARBO LAUGHS", that scene is a restaurant scene halfway through the 110 minute movie. From that point on, the movie can become a veritable screwball comedy with Ninotchka letting her hair down and enjoying the romance of Paris with Leon. She buys a funny hat she found hopeless before, opens windows to let in air, and spreads Communist doctrine in a women's powder room of a bar where Leon is chain drinking brandy. In a quintessential "Lubitsch touch" that may or may not be in the screenplay, Leon stands a drunk Ninotchka against a hotel suite wall with a blindfold, walks away, walks back and lifts up the blindfold to kiss her, puts it back over her face, then opens a champagne bottle to sound like rifle fire. Ninotchka falls to the floor.
NINOTCHKA is glorious entertainment, from darkest tragedy to most hilarious comedy, under a master director and with a fabulous script. The Swedish actress looks like she and Melvyn Douglas are having the time of their lives here, along with the three Russians, countess Ina Claire and, in a bit role, Bela Lugosi as a Russian official in Moscow. Buy the movie, either individually or as part of the wonderful GARBO Signature Collection boxed set.
Garbo laughs in this wonderful ecomedy
In a documentary of the great Greta Garbo, one of her friends said that "Ninotchka" was the film that most reflected Garbo's personality. I never knew the lady herself but I do know that "Ninotchka" is a delightful, beautiful romantic comedy. The director is Ernst Lubitsch, and the famous "Lubitsch touch" is on display here.
Three Russian emissaries (Felix Bressart, Michael Iranoff, and Alexander Granach) are sent to Paris to sell some jewels, but they quickly become addicted to the Parisian's high-living life. Moscow finds out about the threesome's inefficient ways, so they send a senior emissary to straighten things out. This emissary, Nina Ivanovna Yakushova (aka Ninotchka) is of course played to perfection by Greta Garbo. Garbo as the stern Communist is hysterical -- the deadpan way she shakes her head at a ridiculous looking French hat reduced me to giggles. Soon Garbo meets Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas), a Parisian playboy. This leads to some priceless dialogue:
Ninotchka: I am interested only in the shortest distance between these two points. Must you flirt?
Leon: Well, I don't have to, but I find it natural.
Ninotchka: Suppress it!
Ninotchka: Your general appearance is not distasteful.
Leon: Thank you.
Ninotchka: The whites of your eyes are clear. Your cornea is excellent.
Leon: Your cornea is terrific. Ninotchka, tell me, you're so expert on things: can it be that I'm falling in love with you?
Ninotchka: Why must you bring in wrong values? Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological - or, shall we say, chemical - process. A lot of nonsense is talked and written about it.
Leon: Oh I see. What do you use instead?
Ninotchka: I acknowledge the existence of a natural impulse common to all.
Leon: What can I possibly do to encourage such an impulse in you?
Ninotchka: You don't have to do a thing. Chemically, we're already quite sympathetic.
The script was written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Douglas and the three Russian emissaries, as well as Ina Claire as Grand Duchess Swana (Count Leon's ex and Ninotchka's rival) are all wonderful. But this is Garbo's picture. She is simply hysterical. Her wonderfully deadpan way of delivering her lines will reduce you to giggles. Later on, she is radiant as she falls in love and gets drunk from champagne. If you ever want to know what Garbo was all about, watch Ninotchka. Her charisma, her humor, her charm, her magnificence are on full display.
"Never complain, Never explain."
Garbo plays a Russian emissary who comes to Paris to try to win back some jewels that she believes belong to "the people" but were taken by the ousted czarists when the Communists took power. She arrives in Paris as the stereotypical harsh and practical Russian, but after meeting Melvyn Douglas she softens miraculously into the Garbo we know. He teaches her to recognize her passionate side; much of the comedy lies in the disconnect that occurs in our minds when we try to imagine Garbo sans a passionate side. The movie slows down, unfortunately, when she returns to Moscow, and it seems we wait forever for her reuniting with Douglas. But the picture is very stylish, with the "Lubitsch touch" ever present; Billy Wilder helped write it. A classic movie from that magical year (1939). Definitely worth a watch.
Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in an astonishing speech by Colbert) clearer-eyed and more pragmatic about the subtext of sex. This giddy shaggy-dog story follows the couple's split, and Gerry's subsequent flight to Palm Beach. This head-snapping frolic is paced by double-entendres and lampooning looks at the very rich, with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Joel McCrea Director(s): Preston Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Just as Roberto Benigni found himself on the receiving end of some finger-wagging for making a comedy set during the Holocaust, so the great Ernst Lubitsch caught some heat for this extraordinary 1942 satire set behind enemy lines during World War II. In his best performance on film, Jack Benny stars as Joseph Tura, the lead actor and head of a Polish theater troupe that is suddenly enlisted as a Resistance organization when an American pilot (Robert Stack) requires protection. The twist is that the pilot has been having a series of trysts with Tura's wife (Carole Lombard), the hilarious evidence being the disruptive departure of Stack's character from a theater audience each night as the hammy Tura unknowingly cues the lovers by launching into Hamlet's famous soliloquy. The remarkable... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Carole Lombard - Jack Benny Director(s): Ernst Lubitsch DVD Release Date: Released the 01 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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During World War II, Hollywood's patriotic duty was to shoot stirring dramas and good-hearted comedies that celebrated America's brave soldiers and honored their loyal, virtuous wives and girlfriends. Which goes a long way toward explaining why this delirious Preston Sturges farce, filmed in 1943 at the height of the war effort (and of its director's powers), was delayed for a year while Paramount executives wrestled with Sturges's irreverence: in Morgan's Creek, the writer-director tweaked those stereotypes with his tale of Trudy Kockenlocker, a small-town girl who only wants to send our boys off with a smile. That she does, but she wakes up after an all-night party with vague memories of a dubious wedding and soon finds herself pregnant.
One of Greta Garbo's touchstone films, this 1937 adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel finds the actress playing a dying courtesan who falls in love with a young nobleman (a slightly miscast Robert Taylor) and must sacrifice her happiness. Directed by George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story), the supreme "women's director" in Hollywood at the time, the film could have existed just to give Garbo room to be luminous (despite her character's illness) and a great star. But it is also a gorgeous MGM production with strong performances from Lionel Barrymore and the rest of the cast. (Henry Daniell is a standout as the villain.) --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Greta Garbo - Robert Taylor - Lionel Barrymore Director(s): George Cukor DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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