Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Writers:Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Starring: Great Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire
Synopsis: Comrade Ninotchka, a Soviet diplomat, comes to Paris to work out the details of the transfer of some jewels to the “Soviet people.” At first, she is all business, cold ad without human emotion, only interested in being a good apparatchik and serving the people. After she meets Leon, a lawyer representing the Russian princess who also has a claim to the jewels, Ninotchka fals in love and changes into a real woman.
Mom says: According to IMDB, “Greta Garbo did not wear any makeup for her scenes where she is the stern envoy.” She also did not show any emotion or do any acting. Glamorous, yes. But if she can act, I couldn’t tell it from this movie. Then, the script itself was flawed, too. It required her to change from a robotic Communist automaton to a real woman on the strength of one pratfall by her suitor, Leon. I couldn’t see what made Leon show any interest in Ninotchka in the first place, other than physical beauty. Garbo plays the first part of the movie with no feelings whatsoever, and so is completely unbelievable. Then, in the second part where she falls in love the change is so sudden that I couldn’t believe in it either.
All of the urchins found this one boring and somewhat odd.
Just after watching this movie, I read some P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves, a collection of short stories in which Jeeves as usual saves the day. In one of the stories an adolescent boy (who is staying in the same house with Bertie and Jeeves) is infatuated with Greta Garbo:
I clutched the brow.
“Jeeves! Don’t tell me Thos is in love with Greta Garbo!”
“Yes, sir. Unfortunately such is the case. He gave me to understand that it had been coming on for some time, and her last picture settled the issue. His voice shook with an emotion which it was impossible to misread. I gathered from his observations, sir, that he proposes to spend the remainder of his life trying to make himself worthy of her.”
I either need a different introduction to Garbo, or I need to get inside the mind of a thirteen year old boy. Never mind. Strike the latter idea. The mind of a thirteen year old boy is not a place I could ever want to inhabit.