Reseñas de la crítica

NINOTCHKA flies based on the rapport between Garbo and her cast mates, whether it be the knockabout clowns she brings with her from Russia (Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach) or the gobsmacked suitor Douglas – as Count Leon - who looks upon Garbo like a butterfly under glass.

Despite the bubbly erotic wit of Ernst Lubitsch's 1939 comedy, the movie's political satire is chillingly serious... The romantic roundelay, linking fine emotions with fine lingerie, is shadowed by the brutality of Soviet tyranny. Ample comic references to executions, forced confessions, Siberian prisons, censorship, and the secret police are matched by a sharp scene evoking the corrupt and bloodthirsty arrogance of the czarist aristocracy that the Revolution overthrew.

An irresistible piece of wartime propaganda, Ninotchka did well in Europe and the States at its release, but proved a little inexpedient later, when the Soviets Allied up.

In his essay for the Criterion Collection DVD release of TROUBLE IN PARADISE, critic Armond White observes that Lubitsch is "able to indulge carefree behavior because it is undergirded with his appreciation of life's hard facts." No less than such a sophisticated double standard is to be expected from Lubitsch, and NINOTCHKA is a prime, yet underrated, example from his canon. And the music is great, too.

Ninotchka is delicate flirtation and political satire made into a perfect whole, and a reminder of skills that studio writers have largely lost. In their moment, the film's Stalin jokes got bigger yuks than they do now, but sublimely, the sense of romantic dislocation has lost none of its swirl or heat. Famously, Garbo opened that clenched mouth of hers and laughed like a loon; the feelings you'll have will go deeper.