Ninotchka (1939)

(Paris, Moscow, Istanbul; mid 1930's)
IMDb

While watching the film I was continuously impressed, almost to the point of distraction, by the intricacy and wit of Brackett and Wilders screen play. The good lines kept coming, the mixture of the subtle and the obvious in both dialogue and sight gages was a joy to behold. While I’m always ready to heap praise on Wilder, this is the first of his non-self directed screenplays in which I really noticed the direction. The late Billy is right in his well known accolation for director Lubitsch, Wilder himself couldn’t have done this film better. Even with a great like Howard Hawks directing his screenplay for Ball of Fire, there is lacking that exquisite but indefinable unity of the comic and tragic that is the Lubitsch touch. After having seen this and Heaven Can Wait, I’m sold on Ernst.

The plot is classily Wilderian, the setting Paris during the period of the auteur’s brief exile. Politics and romance the field of battle. Greta Garbo is unusually cast in a comic role, but its lite comedy, at which she proves to excel. It’s a good thing Garbo waited to try comedy, because she may have been a hard sell in the genera, if the role she picked for her thematic debut had not been just right. She’s ably aided by the suave and deviously talented Melvyn Douglas, a man who is just always fantastic in everything I’ve seen him do, and leaves an impression be the role large or small. Speaking of leaving an impression with a small role, how about George Tobias, he’s on for maybe two minutes but leaves you laughing, “No Visa!” As do the three underly committed Communists Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski, the last scene in the movie, which concerns these three, is a riot. I think this film probably gets funnier the more you know about period communism, I took a socialist history class last year and this movies probably several points higher in my estimation because of it. Kind of a gutsy topic for a period comedy, thoroughly satisfying though. That’s Bela Lugosi as the fours much feared bureaucratic superior.