From "Ninotchka" (1939), watched last night.
It is one of the first American movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years....
The sly political jokes include Garbo saying: "The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians....
Ninotchka is based on a three-sentence story idea by Melchior Lengyel that made its debut at a poolside conference in 1937, when a suitable comedy vehicle for Garbo was being sought by MGM: “Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism not so bad, after all.”
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38 comments:
Capitalism not so bad, after all.
Nowadays that would kill its chances of getting made.
One of my favorite movies of all time. The champagne scene is hillarious. See it if you haven't already. Or maybe just see it again.
This movie is a lot of fun. Beauvoir might have seen it as a demonstration of how human liberation might come from either capitalism or Communism. Women and men are "freed" from traditional sex roles, and traditional morality--in the case of Communism, it may be said they are forced to be free. If a man and a woman from two progressive worlds meet, they are able to have a relationship of true equality; maybe with traditional and arbitrary constraints cleared away, a natural life becomes possible. Of course, love and sex, two genders and one sexual orientation, are all presented as natural; what do today's progressives think?
Beauvoir's problem with Stalin was that having more or less forced women into the workplace for a while, he then decided more babies were needed, so he more or less forced them to stay home. If government can turn careers on and off like a tap, it's not clear there is any real freedom. Do Communists and progressives believe in freeing us to be natural, or do they actually not believe there is such a thing as human nature?
She comes to Paris thoroughly stripped of all her humanity. “Don’t make an issue of my womanhood.” She calls herself a little cog. She left the farm for the bayonet. She killed a man when she was 16. “Do you want to see my wound?” And yet when she meets a man in Paris, I swear she’s flirting with him shamelessly. She flirts with him by insisting that there will be no flirting. “Suppress it.” And she drags him to the Eiffel tower, to get all the technical specs for the Russian people. She calls him arrogant and tells him that his kind will be extinct. And then she invites herself to his apartment. “As basic material you may not be bad.”
And here we are 80 years later, with the former Soviet Union more sexually free than the United States of America! Such progress!
Billy Wilder wrote it. One, Two, Three is even funnier, I think. Wilder is unappreciated as a cold warrior, because he's so romantic and funny and cynical. But Wilder has been smacking Commies for a long time. That's why Sabrina is way better art than, say, On the Waterfront. It's not ideological, it's the opposite of ideological. What's brilliant about Wilder (and Lubitsch too) is how they mock ideology and stress humanity.
See The Apartment for a withering attack on capitalism.
So that's where they got the idea for the Wendy's ad.
BTW, she says "our country", not "my country."
Forget the politics and just watch it as a romantic comedy. You won't regret it.
"Comrades, People of the World
The Revolution is on the March.
I know. Bombs will fall, civilization will crumble. But not yet, please. Wait. What's the hurry ?"
BTW Billy Wilder kept a sign on his office wall: “How would Lubitsch do it?"
Of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture in 1939, "Ninotchka" is probably the least impressive. And "Ninotchka" is a delight.
(The others: "Dark Victory", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz, "Wuthering Heights"...and the winner, "Gone with the Wind".)
In 1980 I visited relatives in Lithuania, while it was still captive to the USSR. At a family gathering, one woman told of being allowed to visit East Germany (visits to the west were unthinkable). "Do you know," she reported, "there are some families in East Germany that have meat every day!"
Any remaining illusions I might have harbored about communism were vaporized that day.
I'm putting Ninotchka on my to-see list.
Delightful film, watching Garbo thaw and bloom with love and Capitalism.
Rob McLean: Thank you for revealing the stiff competition for awards that year. Wow! What a year!
The main problem with this movie is that Garbo is playing this supposedly cold, grim communist and Melvyn Douglas releases her inner fire. But Garbo seemed like she really was sexless, not just acting sexless, and the acting part was when she had to be in love with Douglas. To a present-day movie viewer, she seems like a lesbian who under no circumstances would get the hots for Melvyn Douglas.
By the way, MD is 38 years old in that movie. It blows my mind to think that's what 38-year-old men were like in 1939. We're so much more youthful today (within our own concept of youthfulness).
But Garbo seemed like she really was sexless, not just acting sexless, and the acting part was when she had to be in love with Douglas. To a present-day movie viewer, she seems like a lesbian who under no circumstances would get the hots for Melvyn Douglas.
Garbo was apparently bisexual [more properly, I think, ambisexual] but had more boyfriends than girlfriends.
Waiting for the remake with deplorable woman previously excited by all Trump's show trials and dissident roundups visiting Caracas to enjoy true liberation under socialism--"not so bad, after all."
It's a fine movie, but it presents a softened, almost idealistic view of the apparatchiks who made life in the USSR so nightmarish......Ninotchka was probably someone like Eugenia Ginzburg. Eugenia taught literature at a Leningrad university. She was a committed Marxist, a true believer. Then she got arrested and sent to a logging camp in Siberia. It was very sudden. One day you're teaching literature, and the next day you're sawing logs in sub zero temps. It's not the kind of story that lends itself to light comedy, particularly the rape and starvation scenes.......They did, however, make a movie out of it. It's called Within The Whirlwind and stars Emily Watson. It's a pretty good movie, but it's it's on no one's ten best lists.
A few years back I read an article by a guy who became Garbo's "minder" (sort of a PA/bodyguard) when she was living in New York in the 1970's. He often used to accompany her on her daily walks incognito through the city.
He reported that despite the impression she conveyed of being a brooding loner, she was ebullient, witty and a tremendous conversationalist.
In an interview with Dick Cavett, Richard Burton tells of meeting Garbo at a party in New York, but he had no idea who she was. Afterwards he told his wife of the time that he had met the most fascinating woman. "You idiot ! That was Garbo. " she replied.
Only Garbo could play Ninotchka. The lucky women gets to play in an exaggerated way to type, and then in an exaggerated way against type. Garbo Laughs !
Ayn Rand was in Hollywood durIng the 1930’s. There are some interesting similarities there with the Garbo character.
Now I have to go find Ninotchka and see what the fuss is about. (Just found it on YouTube, currently downloading)
What really jumped out at me was the "Rigid and gray" characterization. That is a HORRIBLE way to minimize the horror of the Soviet Union, especially the horror of the 30s under Stalin. I'd say bloodsoaked and horrifying but even that doesn't begin to describe it. Rigid and gray is a phrase that might be used to describe the US in the Carter years. Not USSR under Uncle Joe.
Ann Applebaum's book on the Gulag should be required reading in all high schools.
On the other hand, our politicians were so enamored with the USSR (and Germany and Italy) that I suppose that even this weak tea is something to be cheered.
A commenter said If government can turn careers on and off like a tap, it's not clear there is any real freedom.
I suspect sloppy writing more than a sloppy world view but this kind of horrified me too. It's "not clear"?
Seems crystal clear to me. If the govt can turn careers on and off like that, there is no freedom at all, "real" or otherwise.
John Henry
I never thought it would interest me, but now...
1939 may have been Hollywoods best year.
Not the best year in general of course.
Ann said
By the way, MD is 38 years old in that movie. It blows my mind to think that's what 38-year-old men were like in 1939. We're so much more youthful today (within our own concept of youthfulness).
Barbara Tuchman's "Stillwell and the American Experience in China" just became available on Kindle. I'd read it years ago, several times. It is a terrific book and I am rereading it yet again. Still terrific.
Someone, I think Sec State Lansing, says of the Paris peace talks in 1919 "I'm 60 years old and want one last accomplishment before I die."
That reached out and bopped me on the head. It has been a while since I saw 60 and I don't feel anywhere near done.
Yes, Ann, our ideas of youth have certainly changed.
I can't see myself ever retiring, though I may change focus a bit as I go along. (Or maybe not) I figure I have another 20-25 years of useful activity. I can't imagine anything more interesting and fun than what I do on a daily basis.
So, in tribute to an ever youthful Ann Althouse, here is Joan Baez (who I'll never think of as old) singing Dylan's "Forever Young"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMrSrFS-Qk
I'm trying, I'm trying.
John Henry
She was something, that Garbo. Transcendentally beautiful and butch as hell.
The Lansing quote is from memory and may not be word for word.
I can't imagine 38 y/o M. Douglas in shorts, a tee-shirt and a baseball cap - on backwards.
Today's 38 y/o's? Yes.
Garbo is good in "Grand Hotel" - but I've never been a big fan.
Heddy Lamar, Dietrich and Garbo weren't big box office draws in the 30s and 40s. American women didn't identify with them.
"By the way, MD is 38 years old in that movie. It blows my mind to think that's what 38-year-old men were like in 1939. We're so much more youthful today (within our own concept of youthfulness)."
If you mean unsophisticated and immature, then maybe.
A reminder that today's Progressives echo shallow ideologies of their Marxist forefathers: Ninotchka wants to make "woke" a porter at a train station ------
Ninotchka: “Why do you want to carry my bags?” Porter: “That is my business.” Ninotchka: “That’s no business. That’s social injustice.” Porter: “That depends on the tip.”
“Of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture in 1939, "Ninotchka" is probably the least impressive. And "Ninotchka" is a delight.
(The others: "Dark Victory", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz, "Wuthering Heights"...and the winner, "Gone with the Wind".)”
Good Lord, no wonder I feel nostalgia for the period between the wars, the Depression, fascism, and Stalin, notwithstanding. We actually had something like a culture.
The main problem with this movie is that Garbo is playing this supposedly cold, grim communist and Melvyn Douglas releases her inner fire. But Garbo seemed like she really was sexless
she's not at all sexless
you missed the boat on that one!
By the way, MD is 38 years old in that movie. It blows my mind to think that's what 38-year-old men were like in 1939.
There was way more sexual repression in 1939 than there is today. By today's standards, both characters are sexually repressed. Melvyn Douglas is uptight in his dress and manner. But he's positively a loose goose compared to the hot Trotskyite he's trying to woo.
To a present-day movie viewer, she seems like a lesbian who under no circumstances would get the hots for Melvyn Douglas.
Billy Wilder is a guy who was totally comfortable with gay characters. This is a guy who made Some Like It Hot. In 1959!
But there is no way, no how, that Garbo's character is "like a lesbian." To be a lesbian, a woman has to be sexually interested in women. Where is that in the movie? Where is the hint of that?
People repress human sexuality for all sorts of reasons. In 1939, you repress human sexuality because the birth control pill hasn't been invented yet, and having a baby is a very predictable result of human sexuality.
Or you might be sexually repressed because you live in a culture that demands that you repress it. It might be a religious culture (like Iran in 2018), or a Communist culture (like the USSR in 1939).
Sexual repression intensifies feelings, by the way. That's why Hitchcock preferred his blondes to be ice cold.
What the "me too" movement feels like to me is a feminist attempt to engineer a way more sexually repressed culture. Since our media culture is profoundly feminist, that means that what's striking about it is how anti-male it is. Men are told to repress their sexuality, while women are told to unleash their sexuality.
You couldn't make Ninotchka while substituting a feminist from 2018. For one thing, she's not sexually repressed.
Our culture represses love, not sexuality. We deny that we love people, we hold it in, we are afraid to say anything. Sex is all around us, but love is limited and often hidden. I think many conservatives could and would make the argument that our culture should be more sexually inhibited than it is. But the big problem is all the love repression that is going on.
People have sexual relationships while they are afraid to say "I love you." That's pathetic, and a recipe for evil. And consider that a man who says "I love you" in a workplace could easily be fired for it. That's how bad our culture is right now.
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