From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: NINOTCHKA
Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:57:27 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01705
Keywords: author=Leeper

                           Ninotchka's Last Laugh
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper
		       Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper

     1939 was a classic year for MGM studios.  Along with THE WIZARD OF OZ
and GONE WITH THE WIND, Ernst Lubitsch directed Greta Garbo in what is
probably the best remembered film from either career, NINOTCHKA.  The story
pokes fun at politics in the Stalinist Soviet Union.  In the title role
Garbo plays a Soviet envoy sent to Paris to clear up some problems in the
sale of some jewels from Tsarist Russia.  Initially a political fanatic and
patriot, she finds herself falling in love with a gigolo (played by Melvyn
Douglas) and with Western decadence in Paris.

     I had a chance to hear a 1939 radio adaptation of the film, complete
with laugh track, just recently and after the fall of the Soviet Union.  You
would think that after the film's attitudes about the Soviet Union have been
vindicated, that the dogma Ninotchka recites would sound even sillier.  Au
contraire.  The Communism may have failed, but what sounded like absurd
Soviet political correctness in 1939 just sounds politically correct in the
1990s in the United States.  The supposedly indoctrinated Ninotchka would be
very much at home in the 1990s United States.

     Let's look at Ninotchka in the first part of the Lubitsch film.  Start
with the basic situation.  Three Russians in Paris are waiting on a train
platform for an envoy from Moscow and suddenly realize, to their surprise,
that the envoy is the plainly dressed Garbo.

Iranoff:    What a charming idea for Moscow to surprise us with a *lady*
            comrade.

Kopalski:   If we had know we would have greeted you with flowers.

Iranoff:    Ahh, yes.

Ninotchka:  Ninotchka: Don't make an issue of my womanhood.  We are here for
            work, all of us.

     Ninotchka is always practical.  On seeing the suite of rooms her
predecessors had rented in the fancy hotel:

Ninotchka:  How much does this cost?

Iranoff:    Two thousand francs.

Ninotchka:  A week?

Iranoff:    A day.

Ninotchka:  Ninotchka: Do you know how much a cow costs, Comrade Iranoff?

Iranoff:    A cow?

Ninotchka:  Two thousand francs.  If I stay here a week I will cost the
            Russian people seven cows.  Who am I to cost the Russian people
            seven cows?

     These conversations were apparently amusing to 1939 audiences.  Replace
Russia with a corporation and we could be hearing Melanie Griffith in
WORKING GIRL.  Even more so at the end of the scene, when Ninotchka has
already formulated an action plan and sends Kopalski to get the best lawyer
in Paris and Iranoff to get her the section of the Civil Code on properties.
In 1939 this was very unusual characterization for a film.  Today it is
nearly cliche.

     Ninotchka seems obsessed with hard facts and figures, to the amusement
of Leon (played by Melvyn Douglas).  They have the following exchange in the
street when they first meet.  Ninotchka is flat and expressionless
throughout and very businesslike:

Ninotchka:  Correct me if I am wrong.  We are facing north, aren't we?

Leon:       Facing north.  Well, now, I'd hate to commit myself without my
            compass.  Pardon me; are you an explorer?

Ninotchka:  No, I am looking for the Eiffel Tower.

Leon:       Ah.  Good heavens, is that thing lost again?  Oh, are you
            interested in a view?

Ninotchka:  I am interested in the Eiffel Tower from a technical standpoint.

Leon:       Technical?  No, no, I'm afraid I couldn't be of much help from
            that angle.  You see, a Parisian only goes to the top of the
            Tower in moments of despair to jump off.

Ninotchka:  Ninotchka (still deadpan): How long does it take a man to land?
 ...

Ninotchka:  Ninotchka (still deadpan): I'm interested only in the shortest
            distance between these two points.  Must you flirt?

Leon:       Well, I don't have to but I find it natural.

Ninotchka:  Suppress it.

     These days a response stronger than "suppress it" might be given, but
still her reactions do not seem at all out of keeping with the United States
in the 1990s.  the same conversation ends with:

Ninotchka:  You're very sure of yourself, aren't you?

Leon:       Well, nothing's happened recently to shake my self-confidence.

Ninotchka:  Ninotchka: I have heard of the arrogant male in Capitalistic
            society.  It is having a superior earning power that makes you
            that way.

Leon:       A Russian!  I love Russians!  Comrade, I've been fascinated by
            your Five-Year Plan for the last fifteen years.

Ninotchka                     January 17, 1993                        Page 3

Ninotchka:  Your type will soon be extinct.

     The rhetoric is somebody's idea of Stalinist rhetoric, but the concerns
seem quite modern.  One final exchange to show Ninotchka's 1990s pride at
being able to take care of herself and her unwillingness to be dominated by
others:

Ninotchka:  My father and mother wanted me to stay and work on the farm, but
            I preferred the bayonet.

Leon:       The bayonet?  Did you really?

Ninotchka:  I was wounded before Warsaw.

Leon:       Wounded how?

Ninotchka:  I was a sergeant in the Third Cavalry Brigade.  Would you like
            to see my wound?

Leon:       I'd love to.

Ninotchka:  [throws head forward to show back of neck]  A Polish lancer.  I
            was sixteen.

Leon:       Poor Ninotchka.  Poor, poor Ninotchka.

Ninotchka:  Don't pity me.  Pity the Polish lancer.  After all, I'm still
            alive.

     The irony, of course, is that while the Stalinist system that NINOTCHKA
was satirizing has fallen, the attitudes that were being lampooned have not
fallen with it.  The revolution that Ninotchka was so committed to at first
may indeed still be taking place.  Ernst Lubitsch may have thought he was
only poking fun at another country, but he was actually poking fun at the
future.  He probably never expected the day would come when Ninotchka would
seem the most normal character in the film.

					Mark R. Leeper
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					leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
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