Ninotchka (played by Greta Garbo): “What have you done for mankind?”
Count Leon D'Algout (played by Melvyn Douglas): “Not so much for mankind... for womankind, my record isn't quite so bleak.”—Ninotchka (1939), screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch, story by Melchior Lengyel, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Ninotchka premiered on the nation’s screens on this date in 1939 as one solitary shaft of light at the conclusion of W.H. Auden’s “low, dishonest decade.” Only two months before, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had contrived to carve up Poland between them, precipitating WWII. The setting for this delightful confection—Paris—would, in mid-June the following year, fall to the Nazis.
All the more poignant, then, to hear these words from the eponymous Soviet envoy:
“Comrades. People of the world. The revolution is on the march. I know….Wars will wash over us. Bombs will fall. All civilization will crumble. But not yet please. Wait, wait…what’s the hurry? Let us be happy. Give us our moment.”
The quest for happiness, no matter what strange turns it took, could undo even the most committed totalitarian, suggested Ernst Lubitsch in every frame of his classic political satire. Watch how Melvyn Douglas’ Leon cagily pursues Greta Garbo’s visiting Soviet functionary:
Leon: “Ninotchka, you like me just a little bit?”
Ninotchka premiered on the nation’s screens on this date in 1939 as one solitary shaft of light at the conclusion of W.H. Auden’s “low, dishonest decade.” Only two months before, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had contrived to carve up Poland between them, precipitating WWII. The setting for this delightful confection—Paris—would, in mid-June the following year, fall to the Nazis.
All the more poignant, then, to hear these words from the eponymous Soviet envoy:
“Comrades. People of the world. The revolution is on the march. I know….Wars will wash over us. Bombs will fall. All civilization will crumble. But not yet please. Wait, wait…what’s the hurry? Let us be happy. Give us our moment.”
The quest for happiness, no matter what strange turns it took, could undo even the most committed totalitarian, suggested Ernst Lubitsch in every frame of his classic political satire. Watch how Melvyn Douglas’ Leon cagily pursues Greta Garbo’s visiting Soviet functionary:
Leon: “Ninotchka, you like me just a little bit?”
Ninotchka: “Your general appearance is not distasteful.”
Leon: “Thank you.”
Ninotchka: “The whites of your eyes are clear. Your cornea is excellent.”
Leon: “Your cornea is terrific!”
The snatches of dialogue I’ve quoted here epitomize the famous “Lubitsch Touch.” Over the years, thousands of words have been summoned to describe its effervescent fizz (several especially good definitions can be found here), but for my money, the one that escapsulates all these quotes comes courtesy of Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune: “sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance."
“Garbo talks” was the tagline for the Scandinavian leading lady’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1930). This time, for what turned out to be her next-to-last film, the ad slogan ran, “Garbo laughs.”
As he would do three years later with To Be Or Not To Be, Lubitsch was promising something counter-logical in a very dark time: that even the world’s worst tyrannies were powerless before the forces that sustain life: laughter and love.
The nonpareil film blogger “Self-Styled Siren,” in a provocative post on her “Top 10 Objections to the AFI Top 100,” brought to my attention the following priceless exchange at Lubitsch’s funeral. The screenwriter Lubitsch helped to groom for future greatness as a director, Billy Wilder, sighed to his friend, fellow émigré William Wyler: “No more Ernst Lubitsch.” Wyler: “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.”
Several more points, on the actress who brought Ninotchka to such unforgettable life, Garbo:
* Contrary to popular myth, Garbo did not abruptly retire from the screen because of her desire for privacy. Her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), was subpar, and the actress had saved enough money over the years that she could be choosy about future projects. Just as crucial—perhaps more so—Garbo recognized that WWII had closed off Europe, a key part of her fan base. Her withdrawal from movies was meant to be temporary, and she thought seriously about a couple of projects (Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case and an adaptation of Balzac’s 1834 novel La Duchess de Langelais, for which she even took screen tests). But nothing came of them, and by the time she was given an honorary Oscar in 1954 (needless to say, the elusive star never showed up to collect it), the retirement was more or less set.
The snatches of dialogue I’ve quoted here epitomize the famous “Lubitsch Touch.” Over the years, thousands of words have been summoned to describe its effervescent fizz (several especially good definitions can be found here), but for my money, the one that escapsulates all these quotes comes courtesy of Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune: “sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance."
“Garbo talks” was the tagline for the Scandinavian leading lady’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1930). This time, for what turned out to be her next-to-last film, the ad slogan ran, “Garbo laughs.”
As he would do three years later with To Be Or Not To Be, Lubitsch was promising something counter-logical in a very dark time: that even the world’s worst tyrannies were powerless before the forces that sustain life: laughter and love.
The nonpareil film blogger “Self-Styled Siren,” in a provocative post on her “Top 10 Objections to the AFI Top 100,” brought to my attention the following priceless exchange at Lubitsch’s funeral. The screenwriter Lubitsch helped to groom for future greatness as a director, Billy Wilder, sighed to his friend, fellow émigré William Wyler: “No more Ernst Lubitsch.” Wyler: “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.”
Several more points, on the actress who brought Ninotchka to such unforgettable life, Garbo:
* Contrary to popular myth, Garbo did not abruptly retire from the screen because of her desire for privacy. Her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), was subpar, and the actress had saved enough money over the years that she could be choosy about future projects. Just as crucial—perhaps more so—Garbo recognized that WWII had closed off Europe, a key part of her fan base. Her withdrawal from movies was meant to be temporary, and she thought seriously about a couple of projects (Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case and an adaptation of Balzac’s 1834 novel La Duchess de Langelais, for which she even took screen tests). But nothing came of them, and by the time she was given an honorary Oscar in 1954 (needless to say, the elusive star never showed up to collect it), the retirement was more or less set.
* She had a memorable—come to think of it, downright bizarre—encounter with Wilder during her hiatus from films. Speaking more than 50 years later to fan-director Cameron Crowe, Wilder told of how the star, while out running, accepted his spontaneous offer to come in for some drinks, downed several martinis with lightning speed, then spoke of her desire to make another film—but this time with clown makeup that would hide her world-famous features.
* Wilder undoubtedly recalled impressions of the actress while making his next-to-last film, Fedora (1978). The director’s adaptation of Thomas Tryon’s novella from Crowned Heads focuses on a reclusive star whose biography recalls two European goddesses he had worked with: Marlene Dietrich and Garbo. The movie, because of initial difficulties in financing, remains shamefully neglected, and is a fitting coda to the more famous Sunset Boulevard.
* Midway through her retirement, she was already recognized as belonging irretrievably to the past. Probably nowhere is this better epitomized than in John O’Hara’s searing portrait of an early Hollywood cad, The Big Laugh (1962). The novel is dedicated to a quartet of silent-film immortals: Rudolph Valentino, D.W. Griffith, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, and Greta Gustafsson (aka Greta Garbo). Of the four, Garbo was, at age 57, still alive and healthy, and she would not die for another 28 years. But already, the Swedish beauty of timeless beauty was being referred to in the past tense.
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