1940 was the year of Clark Gable-Hedy Lamarr films. I'm very surprised that no review I read mentioned that Hedy played an adulteress-minded gold digger to Gable in the previous MGM hit "Boom Town". Here, Hedy gets her first Hollywood crack at comedy: not really one of her fortes. I'm very surprised no review I read mentioned the slapstickish brawl she had with Gable on their wedding night, after Gable's friend,played by Eve Arden, unexpectedly entered their room and her conversation blew Gable's claim of being a communist sympathizer: Hedy being a dyed in the wool communist sympathizer. Incidentally, Eve Arden never got credit for being the strikingly beautiful woman she was, emphasis always being placed on her sarcastic wit. To me, she outshone Hedy in the beauty department, as well as the personality department, although it's tricky to objectively compare blondes and brunettes.
Hedy was a good choice in playing a Russian communist, in that she still retained much of her Austrian accent, which could easily be construed as a mild Russian accent. Mostly, she plays it stiff, as a caricature of robotic, unemotional Russian communists, as imagined by many Westerners. However, she does engage in a number of kisses with Gable even very early in their relationship. Her father, played by the charismatic Felix Bressart, after discovering that his boss, Gable, is the infamous Comrade X, wanted by the secret police for transmitting unfavorable sketches of the communist world to the US, demands that Gable take his daughter(Hedy) out of Russia, fearing that she will soon be purged. .Hesitant, initially, Gable agrees to meet her at her job as a trolley operator. This eventually leads to an initial romance. Later, Hedy states that they will have to get married so that she can qualify to leave Russia. Initially hesitant, Gable agrees. Strangely, secret police come to their room and arrest the two, as well as Felix, who is suspected of being Comrade X. They spend a short time in prison, during which all the other prisoners, as devotes of the new commissar, are order by the commissar to be executed. After a talk between Gable and the commissar, the 3 are released, and get in a car. Strangely, they are followed and shot at by a car full of secret police, until they come upon a stopped train of tanks. Somehow, they enter a tank and hide there while the train travels to a maneuvers site near the Romanian border. Several military then are knocked unconscious as they descend into the tank. Incongruously, Hedy says that she was trained to operate this tank while in school!! Thus, when it's time for their tank to drive off, she does so perfectly. Strangely, the other tanks follow them. It turns out they picked the general's tank. He has a microphone through which he gives instructions to the other tanks via radio. Eventually, they come to the edge of a very high precipitous. Gable now is driving, and, unfortunately, puts the tank in forward, rather than reverse, and they descend the precipitous with a very jarring landing that should have killed or maimed them. The other tanks follow suit, and continue to follow them, including crossing the river that separates Russia from Romania. We see a newspaper headline: 'Russia invades Romania'. Gable says they will continue in the tank until they come upon the US consulate!! Next thing we know, they are at a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game! Yes, the ending is much too truncated!! Hedy wanted to go to America to talk up communism. But, the film message is supposed to be that, instead, she is seduced by life in the capitalist US. We certainly could have used some more evidence of that, and less of the tank maneuvers!! ..........I forgot to mention Gable's famous phone-derived lie that Nazi Germany had just invaded Russia, set to become true less than one year later!
If you especially want to see Gable and Hedy together in a silly comedy, go ahead and see this, at YouTube, for instance. Otherwise, I favor the later musical remake of "Ninotchka": "Silk Stockings", in which Cyd Charisse takes Hedy's place, and Fred Astaire is trying to convince her that 'the West is best'.
Hedy was a good choice in playing a Russian communist, in that she still retained much of her Austrian accent, which could easily be construed as a mild Russian accent. Mostly, she plays it stiff, as a caricature of robotic, unemotional Russian communists, as imagined by many Westerners. However, she does engage in a number of kisses with Gable even very early in their relationship. Her father, played by the charismatic Felix Bressart, after discovering that his boss, Gable, is the infamous Comrade X, wanted by the secret police for transmitting unfavorable sketches of the communist world to the US, demands that Gable take his daughter(Hedy) out of Russia, fearing that she will soon be purged. .Hesitant, initially, Gable agrees to meet her at her job as a trolley operator. This eventually leads to an initial romance. Later, Hedy states that they will have to get married so that she can qualify to leave Russia. Initially hesitant, Gable agrees. Strangely, secret police come to their room and arrest the two, as well as Felix, who is suspected of being Comrade X. They spend a short time in prison, during which all the other prisoners, as devotes of the new commissar, are order by the commissar to be executed. After a talk between Gable and the commissar, the 3 are released, and get in a car. Strangely, they are followed and shot at by a car full of secret police, until they come upon a stopped train of tanks. Somehow, they enter a tank and hide there while the train travels to a maneuvers site near the Romanian border. Several military then are knocked unconscious as they descend into the tank. Incongruously, Hedy says that she was trained to operate this tank while in school!! Thus, when it's time for their tank to drive off, she does so perfectly. Strangely, the other tanks follow them. It turns out they picked the general's tank. He has a microphone through which he gives instructions to the other tanks via radio. Eventually, they come to the edge of a very high precipitous. Gable now is driving, and, unfortunately, puts the tank in forward, rather than reverse, and they descend the precipitous with a very jarring landing that should have killed or maimed them. The other tanks follow suit, and continue to follow them, including crossing the river that separates Russia from Romania. We see a newspaper headline: 'Russia invades Romania'. Gable says they will continue in the tank until they come upon the US consulate!! Next thing we know, they are at a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game! Yes, the ending is much too truncated!! Hedy wanted to go to America to talk up communism. But, the film message is supposed to be that, instead, she is seduced by life in the capitalist US. We certainly could have used some more evidence of that, and less of the tank maneuvers!! ..........I forgot to mention Gable's famous phone-derived lie that Nazi Germany had just invaded Russia, set to become true less than one year later!
If you especially want to see Gable and Hedy together in a silly comedy, go ahead and see this, at YouTube, for instance. Otherwise, I favor the later musical remake of "Ninotchka": "Silk Stockings", in which Cyd Charisse takes Hedy's place, and Fred Astaire is trying to convince her that 'the West is best'.