We Want to Be Alone: Ninotchka

Author's Rating:

Pros: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Story, Direction, Supporting Cast

Cons: This film deserves a bigger audience

The Bottom Line: 
Ninotchka is a brilliant comedy starring MGM's biggest star Greta Garbo. Must see!

Author's Review
Ninotchka (1939)

“Don’t make an issue of my womanhood.” Ninotchka

Ninotchka is a great romantic comedy starring MGM’s big star Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the movie gives a humorous take on the differences between East and West with a story set in Paris but concerning a bevy of Russians, both exiled whites and Soviet reds. The script, by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reitsch, did a marvelous job of humanizing Garbo, a woman considered almost unapproachable who had specialized in tragic roles like Anna Karenina.

The film opens with a scene of three men who individually take turns looking inside a grand Paris hotel and coming back outside to compare notes. We learn they are three Bolsheviks on a mission from Moscow. It seems the crops are failing and the Soviets are selling priceless Russian antiquities to the highest bidder to build up their foreign exchange to purchase tractors. These three have the jewels from Grand Duchess Swana and are set to meet with a famed Parisian jeweler. The three finally talk themselves into renting a room in the hotel, and not just any room, but the royal suite because it has a safe suitable for the fabulous jewels.

But the three do not have smooth sailing and a hotel employee reports the pending sale to the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), herself an exile in Paris. Swana gets her lawyer to file an injunction but the lawyer holds forth little hope: France has recognized the Soviet Union and will not likely create an international incident over Swana’s jewels. Swana’s boy toy, Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas) appears at the sale and serves a copy of the injunction, thereby stopping it until clear title can be established. Leon then proceeds to corrupt the Bolsheviks by wining and dining them in grand style. The camera observes from the hallway showing the successive courses and the sound of approval from within. After getting them suitably drunk, Leon posts a telegram under their signatures to Commissar Razinin suggesting a 50-50 split. Razinin (Bela Lugosi) responds by sending a special envoy to clear up the mess. Enter Greta Garbo.

Ninotchka is a real star part for Garbo, who enters about 20 minutes into the story. Depicted as a drab humorless tool of the state, she is eventually transformed into a sparklingly humorous woman by the efforts of Leon and the magic of Paris. But - it’s a process and you need to see it for yourself. Great credit is due the marvelous script and the comic relief offered by the three characters Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski who were the original envoys.

Garbo, nearing the end of her career - she left Hollywood after one more film - is luminous as always. She was tremendous and not above parodying her famous mystique (“I want to be alone“) and would live out her remaining days as a recluse, thereby adding to her legendary screen status. Although nominated for four Oscars, Ninotchka won none. 1939 was the year for Gone With the Wind, after all. Garbo never won an individual Oscar during her career. When offered a life achievement Oscar in 1954 she failed to show up.

Ninotchka was made during the “Golden Age of Hollywood” and the production values are the highest, with beautiful sets and costumes and supporting cast from the MGM stable of magnificent character actors. You can certainly see that no expense was spared to make this film memorable. Director Ernst Lubitsch had an eye for staging comedy and lots of his set ups emphasize the comic aspects of the script. All in all, a textbook example of a good movie.

The Ninotchka DVD is by Warner Bros, in black and white, and runs 110 minutes. The only extra is the trailer. Anybody who enjoys a good comedy will like this. A similar good comedy from the same era is It Happened One Night starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable.