Ninotchka

Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) is a bipolar film. The first half of the movie is a side-splitting comedy of errors laced with vicious anti-Communist satire. Then the movie shifts gears into a rather treacly, mopey drama, resulting in an unsatisfying conclusion.

Three Soviet diplomats - Ivanoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart) and Kopalski (Alexander Granach) - arrive in Paris to sell Tsarist jewelry. Enraptured by the carefree capitalist society around them, the diplomats "go native" immediately, causing their boss (Bela Lugosi) to send the stern, emotionless diplomat Nina Yakushova (Greta Garbo) to complete the task. Nina catches the eye of Leon (Melvyn Douglas), a Russian emigre whose paramour, Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), wants him to recover her jewels from the Bolsheviks at all costs. Nina and Leon fall for one another, but their romance is complicated by the Duchess's scheming and Nina's devotion to the USSR.

Ninotchka begins as a truly hilarious comedy, mixing pointed wit with unadulterated silliness. Watching Greta Garbo spout off emotionless technical jargon like a Commie Terminator is hysterical, and the trio of diplomats are funnier than they ought to be. The culture clash humor, with the humorless Russkies bumbling around decadent Paris, seems almost quaint, but it's so well-written and acted it can't help being funny.

Lubitsch provides a pointed attack on Soviet Russia, more intelligent than the bellicose Red Nightmare variety of anti-Communism. Writers Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett some rather pointed jabs at gulags, collectivization and show trials: Leon's "I've been fascinated by your Five-Year Plan for the last fifteen years!" is my favorite. Lubitsch doesn't romanticize the fallen aristocracy: the Grand Duchess, a delusional, acid-tongued biddie who thinks the world revolves around her, shows Tsarist Russia for what it was. But neither is the alternative - Stalin's dehumanizing, regimented "socialist paradise" - any better. Capitalism and liberal democracy are the way to go, even if the finale takes a hilarious parting shot.

Then there's the second half. After the scene where "Garbo laughs," the movie takes an abrupt right turn, the laughs transforming into straight melodrama. Some scenes work (Nina's confrontation with the Duchess), but most make little impression, and the film frankly becomes mawkish in the final reels. Perhaps I jumped the gun in my Sabrina review in blaming Wilder for such awkward shifts in tone; he may well have learned it from Lubitsch.

To be fair to Lubitsch, the tonal shift seems deliberate in Ninotchka, whereas in Wilder's comedies the film goes from gag to gag until the bottom drops out. Still, whatever the intention it's unsatisfying on a dramatic level. The drama is played too straight, with laughs almost nonexistent, bearing little relation to the film's first half. The leads do have chemistry in the comedy scenes, but it dries up afterwards. The characters are too ridiculous to survive the transition to seriousness, with Leon in particular suffering from the change. Thus a brilliantly hilarious film transforms into something less appealing.

Redeeming a lot are the performances, especially Greta Garbo. Garbo makes Nina funny, endearing and poignant in turn, sending up her ultra-stern screen image with aplomb. Melvyn Douglas (Billy Budd) is convincing enough as a charming cad, less so as a love-sick leading man. Ina Claire is appropriately hateful, and Alexander Granach (Hangmen Also Die!), Sig Rauman (Stalag 17) and Felix Bressart (To Be or Not to Be) give hilarious support as the bumbling diplomats. Bela Lugosi gets a showy cameo as the humorless Commissar.

Ninotchka is an intelligent, funny film that doesn't quite reach classic status. It's the hilarious first hour that sticks with me, while the dramatic final half fades into the deep recesses of memory.