Ninotchka

Last night TCM played Ninotchka (1939), the wonderful movie that corresponds to the famous tagline "Garbo Laughs!"  Greta Garbo is a bolshevik-to-the-bone official from Moscow who must travel to Paris to supervise three of her bumbling comrades who are having trouble selling off some jewels confiscated during the Revolution.

The duchess who used to own those jewels just happens to also be in Paris, and a fellow former aristocrat (who now serves as a hotel waiter) tells her that her jewels are within reach.  She sends her lawyer/boyfriend, Melvyn Douglas, to get them back.  He and Garbo's stern comrade meet and ... well you can guess the rest: love, night clubs, witty repartee, it's all very 1930's.

And like the best 1930's movies it only gets better the more you think about it.  As these memorable quotes demonstrate, the movie is surprisingly poignant and its anti-communist message is at once hilarious and sympathetic to those who have found themselves caught up in its works.

Take this one, for example:

Leon: What kind of a girl are you, anyway? 

Ninotchka: Just what you see. A tiny cog in the great wheel of evolution. 

Leon: You're the most adorable cog I've ever seen. 

Garbo's performance is legendary - she plays it straight, and her stern comrade's hard-lined Marxisms roll off so naturally that they're easy to almost miss, making this one of those movies that only gets better the more often you watch it.

Yet, like all truly honest accounts of bolshevism and Marxism (as opposed to reactionary, ill-informed braying) the movie allows that there is something seductive about the argument that some should not work for the leisure of others.  Ninotchka is constantly addressing the figures of service that typically silently populate the backgrounds and doorways of glamorous movies.  In doing so, the movie gives these characters (and the true-life counterparts they represent) a voice.  So many movies represent these figures as a silent, undifferentiated mass of bag carriers, waiters, and cigarette girls.  But here they are shown to have individuated personalities, to be concerned about their tips, and to enjoy a good joke as much as the next guy.

Perhaps the most important figure in this respect is Melvyn Douglas's butler.  Douglas asks if the butler wouldn't rather live in a communist state so that he didn't have to do all this serving all the time.  "Far from it" says the butler - it might be nice not to have to serve, but he'd be less than pleased to have to divvy up his life savings with the rest of the state. 

Throughout, the movie keeps up this subtle, nuanced critique of the Soviet Union.  Scholars today are fond of saying that Marx was right about capitalism, but wrong about Communism, and this movie would seem to lend credence to that theory.  It is strange that we subject ourselves to the arbitrary power of "money" and "value," and it is unfortunate that such a system seems to necessarily depend upon valuing people and their work as lowly as possible.  Spend a few hours with an overview of Marx's theories (don't bother sifting through Capital yourself unless you're writing a thesis or something - it's interminable) and see if you don't look at your job a little differently the next day.

And yet, Communism, the supposed solution to this problem, has been soundly debunked.  It doesn't work.  It never did work.  It isn't going to work.  It shouldn't work - under the guise of liberation it denies basic human freedoms.  And this movie makes no bones about it as Garbo and Douglas whip off zinger after zinger like this one:

Ninotchka: The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

So, in sum, it is a rather delightful and astute analysis of Communism, made all the more poignant by being filmed in 1939.

But, like so many movies from the 1930's, where it is delightfully "modern" in terms of politics and culture, it suffers on points of gender.

Garbo's Ninotchka is "made a woman" by her love for Douglas's character.  Before she was a stern, hard-working woman with hefty responsibilities.  She fought against the Poles at 16, she has worked her way up through the ranks to become Special Envoy.  She denies her gender, demanding that it not be made into an issue.  She's in charge, end of story.

Until she gets a look at that chic hat, that is.  Yes, dear readers, all the power and authority she's accumulates disintegrates in the face of Parisian fashion - hats, dresses, negliges, slips ... what's a girl to do?  Combine that with a man who'd like to teach you the ways of love, and a woman's defenses are useless.  The movie practically sighs with relief as Ninotchka realizes that she doesn't have to be the big boss lady all the time now that she's got a man who would like to take care of her.  To be so powerful is unnatural in a woman - a point made clear by the fact that the three bumbling comrades, whose bolshevism is skin-deep at best, are also surprised to find that they are being supervised by a woman.

And in this the movie's critique of Communism suffers slightly, as well.  Sure, Paris is great if you have mysteriously limitless funds with which to buy designer clothes, and if some well-intentioned rich man decides to take you under his wing.  But what about those cigarette girls who are only too happy to wear little French Maid outfits and entertain elderly Soviets if it means a good tip?

And what about the Duchess, whom Douglas's character unceremoniously forgets as soon as he sets eyes on the younger, more beautiful Ninotchka?  She falls into that classic stereotype - the rich, older woman who barely deserves an ounce of consideration.  She is manipulative and predatory, pathetically tying younger men to her purse strings so that she won't be all alone - clearly a character worthy of scorn (see also: An American in Paris).  

Awesome.

This movie was remade in 1957's Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.  And, being that it's the 1950's, the aforementioned gender themes are amped up by ten.  Charisse does a rather beautiful ballet literally in homage to all the beautiful things she can wear in Paris, and frequently sits at Astaire's knee, explaining how he's taught her that being a woman means completely subsuming yourself to the life a man. 

I know, I know, wipe those tears.  You can have it, too, if you only keep dreaming!

Ninotchka: A+