1939 might have been the best year ever for movies.... Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Love Affair, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Stagecoach to name a few. Ninotchka checks in among these heavyweights, but doesn't deliver the same punch as most.
A humorous trio of Russians sent to Paris to sell prized jewels so starving Russian's can have bread, is invaded by a stern female Russian envoy sent to corral their extravagance and finish the job. Along the way there is a hard-to-believe love story, discussions and compromises about capitalism vs communism, and a realization that free Paris might be more lovely than Stalin's Russia... all wrapped up in a 1939 propaganda campaign about the horrors of life in the USSR. Garbo and Douglas are fine here, but their passions for each other are hardly a screen-melting connection, and the film needed that to sell the story. I respect the film and the era it was made in, but when viewed through 2023 eyes, it doesn't age well, and it's not quite the classic I'd hoped it'd be. Good film, but nothing monumental, except seeing how the politics of the day.are spun and presented to American (and world) viewers.
A humorous trio of Russians sent to Paris to sell prized jewels so starving Russian's can have bread, is invaded by a stern female Russian envoy sent to corral their extravagance and finish the job. Along the way there is a hard-to-believe love story, discussions and compromises about capitalism vs communism, and a realization that free Paris might be more lovely than Stalin's Russia... all wrapped up in a 1939 propaganda campaign about the horrors of life in the USSR. Garbo and Douglas are fine here, but their passions for each other are hardly a screen-melting connection, and the film needed that to sell the story. I respect the film and the era it was made in, but when viewed through 2023 eyes, it doesn't age well, and it's not quite the classic I'd hoped it'd be. Good film, but nothing monumental, except seeing how the politics of the day.are spun and presented to American (and world) viewers.