Ninotchka's Last Laugh
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
1939 was a classic year for MGM studios. Along with THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND, Ernst Lubitsch directed Greta Garbo in what is probably the best remembered film from either career, NINOTCHKA. The story pokes fun at politics in the Stalinist Soviet Union. In the title role Garbo plays a Soviet envoy sent to Paris to clear up some problems in the sale of some jewels from Tsarist Russia. Initially a political fanatic and patriot, she finds herself falling in love with a gigolo (played by Melvyn Douglas) and with Western decadence in Paris.
I had a chance to hear a 1939 radio adaptation of the film, complete with laugh track, just recently and after the fall of the Soviet Union. You would think that after the film's attitudes about the Soviet Union have been vindicated, that the dogma Ninotchka recites would sound even sillier. Au contraire. The Communism may have failed, but what sounded like absurd Soviet political correctness in 1939 just sounds politically correct in the 1990s in the United States. The supposedly indoctrinated Ninotchka would be very much at home in the 1990s United States.
Let's look at Ninotchka in the first part of the Lubitsch film. Start with the basic situation. Three Russians in Paris are waiting on a train platform for an envoy from Moscow and suddenly realize, to their surprise, that the envoy is the plainly dressed Garbo.
Iranoff: What a charming idea for Moscow to surprise us with a *lady*
comrade.
Kopalski: If we had know we would have greeted you with flowers.
Iranoff: Ahh, yes.
Ninotchka: Ninotchka: Don't make an issue of my womanhood. We are here for
work, all of us.
Ninotchka is always practical. On seeing the suite of rooms her predecessors had rented in the fancy hotel:
Ninotchka: How much does this cost?
Iranoff: Two thousand francs.
Ninotchka: A week?
Iranoff: A day.
Ninotchka: Ninotchka: Do you know how much a cow costs, Comrade Iranoff?
Iranoff: A cow?
Ninotchka: Two thousand francs. If I stay here a week I will cost the
Russian people seven cows. Who am I to cost the Russian people
seven cows?
These conversations were apparently amusing to 1939 audiences. Replace Russia with a corporation and we could be hearing Melanie Griffith in WORKING GIRL. Even more so at the end of the scene, when Ninotchka has already formulated an action plan and sends Kopalski to get the best lawyer in Paris and Iranoff to get her the section of the Civil Code on properties. In 1939 this was very unusual characterization for a film. Today it is nearly cliche.
Ninotchka seems obsessed with hard facts and figures, to the amusement of Leon (played by Melvyn Douglas). They have the following exchange in the street when they first meet. Ninotchka is flat and expressionless throughout and very businesslike:
Ninotchka: Correct me if I am wrong. We are facing north, aren't we?
Leon: Facing north. Well, now, I'd hate to commit myself without my
compass. Pardon me; are you an explorer?
Ninotchka: No, I am looking for the Eiffel Tower.
Leon: Ah. Good heavens, is that thing lost again? Oh, are you
interested in a view?
Ninotchka: I am interested in the Eiffel Tower from a technical standpoint.
Leon: Technical? No, no, I'm afraid I couldn't be of much help from
that angle. You see, a Parisian only goes to the top of the
Tower in moments of despair to jump off.
Ninotchka: Ninotchka (still deadpan): How long does it take a man to land? ...
Ninotchka: Ninotchka (still deadpan): I'm 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.
These days a response stronger than "suppress it" might be given, but still her reactions do not seem at all out of keeping with the United States in the 1990s. the same conversation ends with:
Ninotchka: You're very sure of yourself, aren't you?
Leon: Well, nothing's happened recently to shake my self-confidence.
Ninotchka: Ninotchka: I have heard of the arrogant male in Capitalistic
society. It is having a superior earning power that makes you
that way.
Leon: A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by
your Five-Year Plan for the last fifteen years.
Ninotchka January 17, 1993 Page 3
Ninotchka: Your type will soon be extinct.
The rhetoric is somebody's idea of Stalinist rhetoric, but the concerns seem quite modern. One final exchange to show Ninotchka's 1990s pride at being able to take care of herself and her unwillingness to be dominated by others:
Ninotchka: My father and mother wanted me to stay and work on the farm, but
I preferred the bayonet.
Leon: The bayonet? Did you really?
Ninotchka: I was wounded before Warsaw.
Leon: Wounded how?
Ninotchka: I was a sergeant in the Third Cavalry Brigade. Would you like
to see my wound?
Leon: I'd love to.
Ninotchka: [throws head forward to show back of neck] A Polish lancer. I
was sixteen.
Leon: Poor Ninotchka. Poor, poor Ninotchka.
Ninotchka: Don't pity me. Pity the Polish lancer. After all, I'm still
alive.
The irony, of course, is that while the Stalinist system that NINOTCHKA was satirizing has fallen, the attitudes that were being lampooned have not fallen with it. The revolution that Ninotchka was so committed to at first may indeed still be taking place. Ernst Lubitsch may have thought he was only poking fun at another country, but he was actually poking fun at the future. He probably never expected the day would come when Ninotchka would seem the most normal character in the film.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzfs3!leeper
leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews