Review of Ninotchka (1939) by Indi V — 01 Jul 2015
Ninotchka is the story of a group of Russians that go to France with the intent of selling some crown jewels that belonged to the former Russian ruling family. Unfortunately, a Duchess from that family happens to live in Paris and seeks to take the jewels for herself.
This is the excuse to bring in a Russian woman played by Greta Garbo to act as a kind of enforcer. She meets up with a friend of the Duchess who is delaying the sale of the jewels and somehow instantly falls in love.
It's an amazingly poor script that thrusts the two leads into each others' arms with no visible chemistry between them. It probably wasn't a good sign that the advertising for this film all revolved strictly around the fact that Greta Garbo smiled and laughed.
That's right, the only selling factor they could find in this movie is that an actress who ordinarily acted in serious roles would be seen as a light-hearted character for once. Well, guess what? There's a reason she hasn't been in comedies before, because she stinks.
Her acting is so flat and unapproachable that it spoils the entire film because there's no logic to Melvyn Douglas falling for her. The entire plot is a horrible contrivance attempting to create a romantic comedy, but they failed at both the romance and the comedy.
Just a disastrous film with almost no redeeming qualities.
This review of Ninotchka (1939) was written by Indi V on 01 Jul 2015.
Ninotchka has generally received very positive reviews.
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