“Ninotchka,” “Dancing Co-Ed,” “Allegheny Uprising” (Movie Reviews–11/10/39)

Microfiche-New York Times archives, McHenry Library, U.C. Santa Cruz | 11/10/39 | Frank S. Nugent, B.R.C., B.C.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime”.)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

“Ninotchka” – opening credits

“Ninotchka” – clip 1

“Ninotchka” – clip 2

“Ninotchka” – clip 3

“Ninotchka” – clip 4

“Ninotchka” – clip 5

“Ninotchka” – trailer

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Lana Turner in her first starring roll (wearing “abbreviated dancing togs” no less”) and Artie Shaw’s band. What’s not to like?

“Dancing Co-Ed” trailer

[Homer_J_Simpson]

The Duke vs. the Redcoats.

“Allegheny Uprising” trailer

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Ping.

[iowamark]

Whittaker Chambers’ review of Ninotchka in Time:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,762785,00.html
“”Monday, Nov. 06, 1939
Cinema: The New Pictures: Nov. 6, 1939

Ninotchka (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) reveals the moral, political and sartorial bankruptcy that ensues when a female Bolshevik is exposed to the bourgeois perils of running water, Melvyn Douglas and Paris. Unlike most pictures about Russian Reds, this one is neither crude clowning nor crude prejudice, but a literate and knowingly directed satire which lands many a shrewd crack about phony Five Year Plans, collective farms, Communist jargon and pseudo-scientific gab where it will do the most good—on the funny bone.

During one of those shortages of cash that seem to be chronic in the planned economy, Moscow sends Comrades Bul-janoff, Iranoff and Kopalski to Paris to sell confiscated jewels. Though at first they ask, “What would Comrade Lenin say?” about stopping at a swank hotel, the answer soon comes clear: “Comrade Lenin would say, ‘The prestige of the workers must be upheld.’ We cannot go against Comrade Lenin.” But they hastily order “the smallest, dirtiest room in the hotel” when Moscow sends Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) to check up. She is an unsmiling young Russian, with a delightful Swedish accent, who announces that love is a chemical reaction, wants to know at once how much steel the Eiffel Tower contains. At Count Leon’s (Melvyn Douglas) smart bachelor apartment, Ninotchka shocks his staid old butler by asking, “Does he beat you?” and by urging that all wealth be shared equally. As the butler indignantly refuses to share his lifetime savings with his bankrupt employer, she says: “Run along to bed, little father.” When the Count makes love to her while a traffic cop is tooting his whistle, grimly scientific Ninotchka asks: “What is the interval between his whistles?” Her disintegration begins when she discards her semimilitary outfit, buys the most becoming hat she can find, which looks like a horse’s nose bag inverted.

Though the comedy becomes somewhat chilled when the comrades return to Moscow, there are such inspirations as a parade on the Red Square with marchers stolidly carrying hundreds of identical pictures of Stalin. There are scenes in Ninotchka’s small apartment whose limited lebensraum she shares with a girl cellist, a beefy Russian streetcar conductress of the kind Poet e. e. cummings called “non-men,” and a dark, dumpy little man who plods silently in & out—”You never know whether he is going to the washroom or the secret police.”

Garbo, who plays her first full-length comedy with iron, Bolshevik disregard for glamor, in a khaki uniform and middie blouse, succeeds in the difficult task of making her tight-lipped fanaticism funny without making it ridiculous. Even her change of heart is winning and plausible. But why she should change under the impact of Melvyn Douglas is one of those things even the genius of Karl Marx could not explain.

Good gag: When Ninotchka asks, “Aren’t you in love with our Five Year Plan?”, cracks Melvyn Douglas: “I’ve been in love with that Five Year Plan for the last 15 years.”””

[Perdogg]

The great Greta Garbo.

[MinuteGal]

Ninotchka" is a great movie to rent for a winter's evening. The screenwriting is hardly matched in most of today's "comedies".

The lines about the communist system are still funny today, some laugh-out-loud, some very subtle.

From an ideological point of view, the barbs at Leninism and Stalinism may seem broad, and many are. But at the same time, in my opinion, they are concurrently very sophisticated and deftly satirical.

To appreciate the jabs at the oppressive atmosphere in Mother Russia at the time I think you have to be of a certain (ahem) age or at least educated to some extent in the heavy hand of humorless and inhuman Marxism.

I'm afraid the younger Brangelina/Britney crowd today wouldn't "get" most of the dialogue in this movie at all.

Leni

[Perdogg]

thanks for the recommendation

[Homer_J_Simpson]

I caught an early matinee presentation of “Allegheny Uprising.” (Courtesy of Netflix.) Impressions: George Sanders makes a great villain, Pennsylvania looks a lot like southern California, and John Wayne looks strange with all that goop in his hair.