NINOTCHKA

US, 1939, 110 minutes, Black and white.
Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi, Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart.
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

Ninotchka was the film which was advertised as 'Garbo Laughs!'

It is an entertaining satire of the thirties about the meeting of Communism with Capitalism in Paris. Garbo shows comedy flair as the Soviet officer investigating Capitalism and the defection of the Russian emissaries to the Parisian way of life. Melvyn Douglas is the debonair American she meets and falls in love with. Veteran director of light comedy Ernst Lubitsch directed the film and Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder were responsible for the script. The film shows the touch of Wilder satire which was to be so prominent in the films he himself was to direct on such themes, A Foreign Affair, One Two Three. The film was remade as a musical in 1957, Silk Stockings, directed by Rouben Mamoulian.

1. How enjoyable a comedy was this? How did it contrast with modern comedies? How important were styles in the thirties? How are they different from modern styles?

2. How did the film have the essence of comedy: giving laughs, farcical situations, but exploring the foibles and the gentleness of human nature?

3. How important was the Russian atmosphere of the film? The impact of Russia in the thirties under Stalin? Russia and modern responses to Russia in film? The insight into Russian Communist personalities, exaggerated or real? The emphasis on their humourless nature, relentless pursuit of facts and progress? The effect of Socialist society on personality? Dehumanizing them? The importance of the fact that they all defect at the end to the West?

4. How important was the atmosphere of Paris for the film? The initial presentation of Paris and its capitalist luxuries for the three delegates? Their capitulating to capitalism? The romantic aura of Paris? The Eiffel Tower, restaurants? The contrast of the White Russians and Red Russians? Princess Swans, and her jewellery? The importance of champagne in Paris for liberating Communists? How did the film poke fun at capitalism and communism?

5, How did the director create atmosphere with details, dress, places, dialogue, parody of situations e.g. the traffic islands, Leon's dining with the workers, the champagne banquet, Ninotchka's trying to get facts and figures about the Eiffel Tower etc.

6. How attractive a heroine was Ninotchka? Greta Garbo's performance, serious and comic? The relentlessness of her seriousness about facts, about relationships? Her not responding to the jokes? The hat? Her laughing and change of heart, champagne versus the facts? The humour of her change, the pathos of her return to Moscow, the importance of the clash with Swan? The tearing of loyalties and her return to Istanbul? Was it a character presentation or just a clever performance of a comic character?

7. Leon as hero? His capitalist values? His playboy changed to seriousness because of Ninotchka? From comedy to pathos?

8. The three Russian delegates: the satire in their farcical behaviour, the pathos in their being dominated by socialism, the irony of the ending?

9. This is considered a classic of comedy. Why?