Post by klep on Mar 4, 2019 8:30:00 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 3/4: Ninotchka
WOMEN OF OLD HOLLYWOOD WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is provided by a guest contributor
It's fascinating to me that there's actually a Hitler joke in Ninotchka. Toward the beginning of the movie,
the three failed Soviet trade representatives are meeting their replacement at the train station, and they
aren't certain what "he" looks like. They halfheartedly trail a man they suspect of being the right one, and
he enthusiastically greets a woman, "Heil Hitler!" They agree that this is definitely not who they were
waiting for. This is especially interesting given that the director and at least two members of the cast
were of Jewish descent.
The movie is, however, equally scornful of the Soviet system. Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix
Bressart), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach) are sent to Paris to sell the fourteen pieces in the fabulous
jewel collection of the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire). Who, as it happens, also lives in Paris and is
friends with a waiter at the hotel in which the men are staying, inasmuch as said waiter is Count Alexis
Rakonin (Gregory Gaye). Swana takes advantage of the situation to send her lover, Count Leon d'Algout
(Melvyn Douglas), to distract the envoys. This works until they are removed from authority and a new
envoy is sent, the joyless Nina Ivanovna Yakushova (Greta Garbo), nicknamed Ninotchka.
Naturally, before he meets with her as an envoy—she in fact refuses to meet with him as an envoy—Leon
encounters Ninotchka on the street. Further naturally, they fall in love. Ninotchka is uncertain she can do
her duty to the Soviet people and still be in love with a decadent capitalist aristocrat. Honestly, given that
this was under Stalin, she couldn't—there's no way she would have survived had knowledge of her affair
been made public; we are after all talking about a system that would in years to come send former POWs
to the gulags because only collaborators would have failed to have been killed by the Nazis.
Soviet Ninotchka is a dreary, gloomy woman, perfectly suited to a Stalinist society. The way Leon gets
through to her in the end is by making her laugh, because free and easy laughter is at least as decadent as
the frankly unattractive hat she wears to prove that she's different now. She factors the cost of the Royal
Suite in cows—a cow a day. Is she, she asks, worth so many cows to the Soviet people? And indeed, the
way to get her to do her duty is to point out what she can save for those selfsame Soviet people by making
a deal that will get the jewels sold more easily and without a great deal of court expenses.
Which I rather like, honestly, because it does prove that Ninotchka doesn't really surrender everything
about herself for love. She genuinely believes the Revolution brings the best possible life for the Soviet
people, and is it really her fault that she falls in love with a man who's such a wastrel that the reason his
butler doesn't want the revolution to come is that he refuses to share half his bank account with his
penniless employer? (Or perhaps we should describe him as without a sou; Paris, after all.) Even when
she returns to Moscow, she doesn't wish to spend all her time rembering Paris. She still believes Moscow
is wonderful.
I wonder, then, how Ninotchka would have gotten along later in the Stalinist system. The movie makes
an awful lot of jokes about really unfortunate subjects—repeatedly, we are reminded that the Soviet
people are starving, that there are political show trials, that the price for failure is Siberia at best and likely
to be death. Ninotchka was such a pure Soviet idealist that I cannot imagine her going along with
Stalinist excesses. Honestly, the fact that she had been an envoy in Paris would itself probably prove
problematic for her were she still in Moscow in the late '40s and early '50s.
Interesting, too, that Swana explicitly doesn't care if Leon fools around on her. She knows that he's using
her as a meal ticket. She's providing him with food and his apartment and all sorts of other things, and if
he occasionally fools around with a pretty young thing, well, that's just how these things go. Claire was
eight years older than Douglas, twelve years older than Garbo. That's not a huge age difference, but it's
enough for a woman to be aware of what she's facing. Swana is just as interested in protecting that as she
is getting her jewels back.
Honestly, though, she's lucky—there are a lot of movies from the era about aristocrats in various countries
wherein the aristocrat lost everything in the Revolution or what have you, and this explicitly isn't one of
those. Swana is not one of those. She still has a maid and a kept man and so forth. She isn't Count
Rakonin, there at the restaurant of a hotel working as a waiter. Heck, we can be pretty sure that Leon isn't
Russian—Russian nobility wouldn't have the slightest chance of the visa he tries for late in the movie—
and he's surviving by mooching off Swana. Europe between the wars wasn't a great time and place for
most aristocrats, and Swana is doing better than most.
Its lighthearted treatment of its subject matter can fool you into thinking that Ninotchka doesn't notice
such things, beyond the title card at the beginning mentioning that this is before France was at war—it
was released just over two months after France declared war on Germany—but there's really a lot of
depth here. And, of course, a lot of quality performances. Though fourth-billed Bela Lugosi is in a grand
total of one scene!
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 3/11: 9 to 5
PLUCKY HEROINES WEEK!
Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and the inimitable Dolly Parton star in our next Movie of the Week as a trio of women seeking revenge against their misogynistic boss. Join us next week for 9 to 5, available for rent on Amazon Video (though it is not free for Prime members).
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 3/5: White Men Can't Jump
Next week the podcast crew take us into the world of basketball, with the first of two films that look at the game outside of the bright lights and cameras of the arenas. Up first is this film about an unlikely pair of street ballers. Join us next Wednesday for a discussion of White Men Can't Jump, available for rent on Amazon Video (and free for Prime members with a Starz add-on).
WOMEN OF OLD HOLLYWOOD WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is provided by a guest contributor
It's fascinating to me that there's actually a Hitler joke in Ninotchka. Toward the beginning of the movie,
the three failed Soviet trade representatives are meeting their replacement at the train station, and they
aren't certain what "he" looks like. They halfheartedly trail a man they suspect of being the right one, and
he enthusiastically greets a woman, "Heil Hitler!" They agree that this is definitely not who they were
waiting for. This is especially interesting given that the director and at least two members of the cast
were of Jewish descent.
The movie is, however, equally scornful of the Soviet system. Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix
Bressart), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach) are sent to Paris to sell the fourteen pieces in the fabulous
jewel collection of the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire). Who, as it happens, also lives in Paris and is
friends with a waiter at the hotel in which the men are staying, inasmuch as said waiter is Count Alexis
Rakonin (Gregory Gaye). Swana takes advantage of the situation to send her lover, Count Leon d'Algout
(Melvyn Douglas), to distract the envoys. This works until they are removed from authority and a new
envoy is sent, the joyless Nina Ivanovna Yakushova (Greta Garbo), nicknamed Ninotchka.
Naturally, before he meets with her as an envoy—she in fact refuses to meet with him as an envoy—Leon
encounters Ninotchka on the street. Further naturally, they fall in love. Ninotchka is uncertain she can do
her duty to the Soviet people and still be in love with a decadent capitalist aristocrat. Honestly, given that
this was under Stalin, she couldn't—there's no way she would have survived had knowledge of her affair
been made public; we are after all talking about a system that would in years to come send former POWs
to the gulags because only collaborators would have failed to have been killed by the Nazis.
Soviet Ninotchka is a dreary, gloomy woman, perfectly suited to a Stalinist society. The way Leon gets
through to her in the end is by making her laugh, because free and easy laughter is at least as decadent as
the frankly unattractive hat she wears to prove that she's different now. She factors the cost of the Royal
Suite in cows—a cow a day. Is she, she asks, worth so many cows to the Soviet people? And indeed, the
way to get her to do her duty is to point out what she can save for those selfsame Soviet people by making
a deal that will get the jewels sold more easily and without a great deal of court expenses.
Which I rather like, honestly, because it does prove that Ninotchka doesn't really surrender everything
about herself for love. She genuinely believes the Revolution brings the best possible life for the Soviet
people, and is it really her fault that she falls in love with a man who's such a wastrel that the reason his
butler doesn't want the revolution to come is that he refuses to share half his bank account with his
penniless employer? (Or perhaps we should describe him as without a sou; Paris, after all.) Even when
she returns to Moscow, she doesn't wish to spend all her time rembering Paris. She still believes Moscow
is wonderful.
I wonder, then, how Ninotchka would have gotten along later in the Stalinist system. The movie makes
an awful lot of jokes about really unfortunate subjects—repeatedly, we are reminded that the Soviet
people are starving, that there are political show trials, that the price for failure is Siberia at best and likely
to be death. Ninotchka was such a pure Soviet idealist that I cannot imagine her going along with
Stalinist excesses. Honestly, the fact that she had been an envoy in Paris would itself probably prove
problematic for her were she still in Moscow in the late '40s and early '50s.
Interesting, too, that Swana explicitly doesn't care if Leon fools around on her. She knows that he's using
her as a meal ticket. She's providing him with food and his apartment and all sorts of other things, and if
he occasionally fools around with a pretty young thing, well, that's just how these things go. Claire was
eight years older than Douglas, twelve years older than Garbo. That's not a huge age difference, but it's
enough for a woman to be aware of what she's facing. Swana is just as interested in protecting that as she
is getting her jewels back.
Honestly, though, she's lucky—there are a lot of movies from the era about aristocrats in various countries
wherein the aristocrat lost everything in the Revolution or what have you, and this explicitly isn't one of
those. Swana is not one of those. She still has a maid and a kept man and so forth. She isn't Count
Rakonin, there at the restaurant of a hotel working as a waiter. Heck, we can be pretty sure that Leon isn't
Russian—Russian nobility wouldn't have the slightest chance of the visa he tries for late in the movie—
and he's surviving by mooching off Swana. Europe between the wars wasn't a great time and place for
most aristocrats, and Swana is doing better than most.
Its lighthearted treatment of its subject matter can fool you into thinking that Ninotchka doesn't notice
such things, beyond the title card at the beginning mentioning that this is before France was at war—it
was released just over two months after France declared war on Germany—but there's really a lot of
depth here. And, of course, a lot of quality performances. Though fourth-billed Bela Lugosi is in a grand
total of one scene!
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 3/11: 9 to 5
PLUCKY HEROINES WEEK!
Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and the inimitable Dolly Parton star in our next Movie of the Week as a trio of women seeking revenge against their misogynistic boss. Join us next week for 9 to 5, available for rent on Amazon Video (though it is not free for Prime members).
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 3/5: White Men Can't Jump
Next week the podcast crew take us into the world of basketball, with the first of two films that look at the game outside of the bright lights and cameras of the arenas. Up first is this film about an unlikely pair of street ballers. Join us next Wednesday for a discussion of White Men Can't Jump, available for rent on Amazon Video (and free for Prime members with a Starz add-on).