In The Time Of The Soviet-Franco Friendship Association-With Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka In Mind  

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, 1939

Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) of Rick’s American Café in the movie Casablanca famously said to Ilsa (played by Ingrid Bergman) that they “would always have Paris,” meaning the Paris of their whirlwind romance. Well apparently the city of lights can play the backdrop for more than one film, and more than one kind of film in the case of the film under review the 1939 classic romantic comedy Ninotchka. While Russian head Red, General Secretary Joseph Stalin would certainly not have liked this film (if I recall it was banned for many years in the Soviet Union and its environs) as a parody of the shortcomings of his regime as a period piece it retains its interest. Hell, if I had been adhering to the party line, the Communist International line of the time, I might not have liked it, not liked it publicly although there are several sly political jabs I could have laughed at privately, very privately like in an acoustically sealed room with all doors locked.      

Here’s why Uncle Joe was in a snit. And remember this is only a romantic comedy. It was all about the jewels, right? The jewels confiscated by the Soviet authorities in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 when the nobility and their hangers-on either fought with the Whites and perished or more sensibly went into  exile in places like Paris. By 1939 thought conditions in the Soviet Union warranted the necessity of selling jewels and other valuables on the world market to bring in ready cash for food. (Yes, Uncle Joe would not have liked that at all). So the Russian Board of Trade sent three goofs (what else could they be called with their Marx Brothers-type antics and I don’t mean Karl antics) to sell off Duchess Swana’s jewels to a wary jeweler in Paris. It just so happened that among the Russian ex-patriates in Paris was that self-same Swana (played by the catty Ina Claire) who was holding court in exile waiting on the Soviet experiment to burn itself out and for the old order to return. While she was waiting though she would be more than happy to repossess her “stolen” goods. That is where her consort of sorts the Count d ’Algout (played by Melvyn Douglas) devised a plant to get them back-bring a ton of litigation to hold up the sale until the French courts can determine the legal owners. So the Count gets in touch with the three Russian goofs and lays it on the line to them. But they are only low-level functionaries, at best.            

That is where the heart of the story begins-the rags to riches romance part. The Russians send a special envoy, a woman, a hard Bolshevik to take charge of the case, Ninotchka (played by the alluring Greta Garbo). Although the Count and Ninotchka meet by chance on the street the up close and personal duel between the hard red and the cosmopolitan bourgeois is on. Naturally the delights of Paris grab Ninotchka as they do almost anybody and in a series of cat and mouse scenes she and the Count fall in love. Even if it was only to be just a whirlwind affair since she had to go back to Moscow when the litigation was over. Moreover Swana, who despite her blasé demeanor wanted the Count to herself, by devious means got personal possession of the jewels and forced Ninotchka on her terms back on the plane to Moscow and without her Count.

Of course here is where film conventions for romantic comedies or any romance film come into play. The Count once he finds out his beloved is gone devised some schemes involving the three goofs in order to get Ninotchka back to Paris and life happily ever after. Naturally they work. And get the goofs to Paris too. Along the way there are plenty of allusions to the real situation in late 1930s Russia (the Moscow trials) and the social and economic hardships that probably had Uncle Joe throwing vodka bottles around on drunken nights in the Kremlin after he watched his screening of the film. But now as the dust has long settled as a period piece it is a good showing of the talents of both Garbo and Douglas. That makes the film worth seeing these days when you don’t have to worry about the party line.