Ninotchka (1939)

"...screenplay [is]... literally sparkling with brilliant dialog...  Boxoffice Magazine
"Satirical, energetic and witty.  VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever

Editor's Note In one of the most famous roles of her career, Greta Garbo plays a grim Soviet offical who travels to Paris on government business, but eventually succumbs to the city's romance. Melvyn Douglas is the Frenchman who warms her icy heart. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including Best Picture, Best Actress--Greta Garbo, Best Original story.

	Greta Garbo
	Ina Claire
	Melvyn Douglas
	Sig Rumann
	Charles Brackett, et al. - Screenplay
	Ernst Lubitsch - Producer
	Ernst Lubitsch - Director
	Gene Ruggiero - Editor
	Melchior Lengyel - Story By
	Werner R. Heymann - Original Music By
	William H. Daniels - Cinematographer

Ninotchka is a stern, straightlaced Communist Party member sent to Paris to finish the sale of Grand Duchess Swana's jewels for the Soviet government. But, while studying the frivolous materialism of Paris, Ninotchka meets Leon, Swana's lawyer and sometime lover, and the two become enamored with one another -- without knowing each other's identity. The Grand Duchess, in the meantime, is suing the USSR for ownership of the jewels. What follows is a delicate web of intrigue and deception as Swana tries to blackmail Ninotchka into leaving Paris. Soon the two lovers have to overcome political hurdles and cross borders just to be together.

"This picture takes place in Paris in those wonderful days when a siren was a brunette and not an alarm... and if a Frenchman turned out the light it was not on an account of an air raid!"----Quote from opening sequence

USA Today
"...Garbo's penultimate movie..." 01/05/1989 p.6D

Premiere
"[T]he heretofore serious actress lightens up in Lubtisch's quick-witted comedy." 04/01/2004 p.62

Boxoffice Magazine 8 of 10
Scintillatingly and as Russian as Borsht, this romantic comedy, which satirizes life and love in the Soviets, at the same time adds several inches to the film stature of two of Hollywood's most famous -- Producer-Director Ernst Lubitsch and Actress Greta Garbo. A streamlined screenplay, literally sparkling with brilliant dialog, tests the mettle of this duo, with the result that the widely vaunted Lubitsch touch of yore asserts itself with new mastery. Garbo finds herself in an entirely new type of role, one which prescribes the more difficult nuances of sophisticated comedy, and while she rises to the situation nobly, her elegance remains undeniable, and she carries herself with proud assurance of her talents. While Ninotchka may lack something for the masses, it must be catalogued as a triumph for all concerned.

VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever 8 of 10
Delightful romantic comedy. Garbo is a cold Russian agent sent to Paris to check up on her comrades, who are being seduced by capitalism. She inadvertently falls in love with a playboy who melts her communist heart. Garbo talks and laughs. Satirical, energetic and witty.