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.
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.
NINOTCHKA, which premiered in Hollywood on October 6, 1939, was the first film produced for MGM by Ernst Lubitsch.
NINOTCHKA was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1990.
The picture was advertised as the film where "Garbo Laughs!", recalling the "Garbo Talks!" campaign of ANNA CHRISTIE. But, according to a 1980 Hollywood Reporter item, Garbo's laugh had to be dubbed in, as she "couldn't summon up more than a somber chuckle." Ernst Lubitsch was quoted as saying that Garbo was the "most inhibited person [he had] ever worked with." He claimed that she was highly embarrassed to act drunk in a restaurant filled with extras.
A New York Times article claims that MGM changed the setting of the film from Moscow to Paris, in order to avoid showing any depiction of living conditions in Russia, whether they be "pleasant or deplorable."
Cary Grant was MGM's first choice for male lead, and William Powell was a consideration as late as a week before production. But the cameras started rolling without a leading man. Melvyn Douglas was finally cast as Count Leon d'Algout.
NINOTCHKA created an uproar in the Soviet Union. As late as the 1950s, Soviet authorities were threatening a Vienna theater to force it to stop running the film.
A misunderstanding occurred when a letter was sent from the Soviets to Italian government officials in Rome demanding that NINOTCHKA be pulled from Italian theaters. The office was without a translator at the time and mistook the note for correspondence regarding the Soviet proposal for major political negotiations.
Excerpt: "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
DVD Features:
Region [unknown]
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
Mono 1.0 English
Additional Release Material:
Documentary: Vintage BBC Documentary Profile Garbo, Hosted by Joan Crawford
Distributor Notes: Garbo Talks! proclaimed ads when silent star Greta Garbo debuted in talkies. Nine years and 12 classic screen dramas later, the gifted movie legend was ready for another change. Garbo Laughs! cheered the publicity for her first comedy, a frothy tale of a dour Russian envoy sublimating her womanhood for Soviet brotherhood until she falls for a suave Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas).
Working from a cleverly barbed script written in part by Billy Wilder, director Ernst Lubitsch knew better than anyone how to marry refinement with sublime wit. "At least twice a day the most dignified human being is ridiculous," he explained about his acclaimed Lubitsch Touch. That's how we see Garbo's lovestruck Ninotchka: serenly dignified yet endearing ridiculous. Garbo laughs. So will you.
Source: Warner Home Video
Director of Photography
William Daniels: Famous Cinematographer
Writer
Charles Brackett: Screenwriter and Producer, collaborated with Billy Wilder
Production Designer
Cedric Gibbons: Art Director/In USA
Review 1:
"...Garbo's penultimate movie..."
Source: USA Today
p.6D 01/05/1989
Review 2:
"[T]he heretofore serious actress lightens up in Lubtisch's quick-witted comedy."
Source: Premiere
p.62 04/01/2004
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