Ninotchka

The joke has a melodic forerunner, "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?" The remains of imperial Russia fit in a jewelry chest, the assignment is to sell them in France but the Bolshie agents (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach) get distracted by capitalistic luxury. "I don't want to go to Siberia!" "And I don't want to go to Hotel Terminus!" Their little bacchanalia in the royal suite is curtailed by the arrival of the eponymous commissar, a frowning column in rigid tunic and beret, Greta Garbo beautifully sending up her own grave persona. Her resolve is tested by the boulevardier (Melvyn Douglas) whose suavity plays irresistible force to her immovable object. "Must you flirt?" "I don't have to, but I find it natural." "Suppress it." "Occident de désirs," as Mallarmé would have it, an ideal backdrop for Ernst Lubitsch's shimmering junction of sex and politics. The Eiffel Tower is first and foremost a feat of architecture in the heroine's eyes, unenchanted by the City of Lights seen from the top. "I do not deny its beauty, but it's a waste of electricity." Jokes bounce fruitlessly off her until an accidental pratfall cracks the cement, Garbo mimes the guffaw as if gasping for air, the Great Thaw continues with glasses of bubbly and a certain haute-couture chapeau. Execution and resurrection by champagne, a tipsy plea for romance in a world on the edge of cataclysm: "Not yet, please. What's the hurry? Give us our moment. Let's be happy." (Even Lenin's photograph softens into a smile.) No sadder sight than a redacted love letter, no more hopeful place than a haven for defectors. "We have the high ideal, but they have the climate." Wilder goes on to build off of his own screenplay in One, Two, Three, Mamoulian provides the official remake (Silk Stockings) and Sternberg the unofficial one (Jet Pilot). With Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi, Gregory Gaye, Rolfe Sedan, Edwin Maxwell, Richard Carle, and George Tobias. In black and white.