The champagne fizz hasn't gone from Lubitsch's 1939 comedy NINOTCHKA; his effortless sophistication and the stinging satire of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's script still dazzles.
Despite it's success - and a fourth Best Actress nomination - this was Greta Garbo's penultimate film. Her films were always profitable in Europe and with the outbreak of WWII she and MGM agreed to a hiatus. She never returned.
An emigré aristrocrat discovers that three Soviet emissaries are in Paris to sell her seized jewelry but her suave lover Count Leon gets the sale halted while introducing them to the city's delights.
The Kremlin send a hardline envoy to complete the sale; Nina Yakushova is a dour comrade and on her first night she asks a man for directions, it, of course, is Leon who is immediately snitten and turns on all his Parisian charm.
Slowly Ninotchka relents - but will she choose love or Lenin?
Shelf
or charity shop? Although a resident of my plastic DVD storage box, NINOTCHKA is a keeper. Lubitsch's trademark souffle-like direction skips through the plot while the Wilder/Brackett script still delivers stinging, ageless lines - when asked by the emissaries how Russia is on her arrival in Paris, Ninotchka says "Very good; the last show trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians". The cast all catch just the right tone: Ina Claire as the Grand Duchess is an elegant villain - what a strange set it must have been as she was the ex-wife of John Gilbert, Garbo's ex-lover! Melvyn Douglas is perfect as Count Leon and there is excellent support from Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart and Alexander Granach as the three emissaries - and yes, that IS Bela Lugosi as the Kremlin's trade commissar. But it's Garbo you cannot take your eyes off of as she delivers a gravelly comic performance which is pure delight. Watching her slowly melt from icy disdain to rapturous love is to see why she is still one of the most captivating screen actresses ever.
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