But I'd like to offer up why all those unfortunate elements don't matter. Greta Garbo has genuine and hilarious comedic timing as Ninotchka, the stone-faced, overly rational Russian agent sent by the Soviet government to fix a botched deal to sell Russian jewels. For instance, take this scene where Ninotchka and her love interest Count Leon d'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) talk past one another:
"Your general appearance is not distasteful," Ninotchka says without a hint of irony. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a single line. Ninotchka is a funny movie with a love for sharp dialogue and wit. The screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch (based on the story by Melchior Lengyel) goes a long ways towards creating sympathetic and recognizable characters, turning stock characters into flesh and blood figures -- including Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, and Alexander Granach as the bumbling diplomatic envoy who goes ahead of Ninchotka. And even if they're restrained by the antics of the comedy and romance of director Ernst Lubitsch's production, Lubitsch never seems to be mocking them, so much as he appears to be poking fun at human nature more generally, and the Soviet Union specifically. Lubitsch also gives the production -- with his so-called "Lubitsch Touch" -- a sense of elegance and luxuriance. The film looks gorgeous. The people, the outfits, and the locales all look gorgeous, for that matter.
But, more importantly, the film actually gives a surprisingly detailed conversation, for its time, underneath its satire of the Soviet Union, about the Soviet-American divide. People discuss the merits of both philosophies and countries (even if it's highly reductive and not the film's primary concern, and even if the film looks down on the Russian side of things). America is often enough made to look silly in its habits and ways of thinking, and through Ninotchka -- and in contrast to her rival Grand Dutchess Swana (Ina Claire) -- the film offers up the possibility of there being some worthwhile qualities to Russia -- and, possibly strangest and most interesting of all, argues in favor of the Russian monarchy's overthrow (a point made all the weirder when you consider that the film is throwing satirical jabs at the oppression of the Soviet state). The film doesn't go far enough with this, but it's hard to fault a studio comedy, whose first concern was to be funny, with failing to be completely refined in its argument. It's refined in plenty of other regards to make up for its shortcomings.
Grade: ★★★
No comments:
Post a Comment