Movie Review – Ninotchka

Ninotchka (1939)
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Ninotchka is a perfect example of Western anti-communist propaganda. The impetus of this film came from a three-sentence short story written by Jewish Hungarian author Melchior Lengyel. The story went like this: “Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism not so bad, after all.” I can also point to evidence that the U.S. government acknowledged this was anti-Soviet propaganda because when MGM attempted to re-release it during World War II, it was suppressed. After all, the USSR was our ally. It is informative to look at archived material from that time, particularly Western publications like Time and Life magazines, as they often spoke glowingly about the Soviets and even Stalin. It seems they suddenly became “evil” when the United States decided to pivot post-war for their own gain. 

A trio of men working for the Russian Board of Trade arrive in Paris to sell jewelry confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Count Rakonin, a former Russian nobleman now working as a waiter in the same hotel these men are staying in, overhears what they are going to do. He alerts the Grand Duchess Swana that her court jewels are about to be sold. Swana’s lover, Count Leon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas), offers to help get them back. As the men meet with a jeweler in their hotel suite, Leon intervenes with a court petition to hold the sale until a judge can determine their ownership. 

After a telegram is sent to Moscow explaining the situation, another envoy is sent to fix things, Nina Ivanovna “Ninotchka” Yakushova (Greta Garbo). She is very methodical and rigid and keeps her eye on the goal. Of course, Leon and Ninotchka meet before they know who each other is (a typical Lubitsch comedy trope); he is attracted to her and then discovers she is his rival in this legal matter. He makes it his goal to crack her icy facade, and with that, the film thinks it’s making some clever comment on “those silly Soviets.”

It’s hard to get a clear definition of “communism” or “fascism” from your average American. More often than not, they spout half-remembered propaganda talking points that conflate the two. The most significant difference and most effective lure for people from communist countries has frequently been luxury. “See these lavish, shiny products full of bells & whistles! They don’t have these in your boring, poor country” is the typical patter you’ll hear. This same thing brings Ninotchka to see “capitalism as not so bad.” Look at all the parties and nice clothes.

Socialism, the bridge from capitalism into communism, rightfully de-prioritizes luxury for comfort. Socialist medicine ensures everyone has free access to healthcare at the point of delivery. Capitalist healthcare, as I saw in a story shared on social media, can be summed up as taking your daughter to the E.R. because she got a nasty gash on her head. In 30 minutes, they closed the wound with glue and charged the parent a $250 copay. Weeks later, the parent received an additional bill for $760 because they hadn’t met their deductible for the year. The bill before insurance was $4,600. To put glue on a wound and close it. This is the system I am told is the best and most efficient. Come the fuck on.

Capitalism promises luxury and fails to deliver that or comfort for most people living under it. You who are reading this aren’t a capitalist. Unless you own the means of production, you are a worker and labor under capitalism. Part of this economic system’s means of sustaining itself is through reactionary propaganda, like Ninotchka, which poses as light entertainment while sending an unambiguous, uneducated message that communism is wrong and the people who are communists just have a stick up their butt. Ninotchka’s outstanding flaw, which Leon seeks to break, is that she doesn’t smile, implying communists do not feel joy. There’s that good old misogyny you can expect from capitalism. 

Having lived among rural, low-income populations in the States nearly my entire life, I can tell you I saw very little joy about the economic system people were forced to live under. Most of them had been successfully indoctrinated to never critique the system. They would complain about wages, poor treatment at work, and the difficulty of getting anywhere despite scrimping & saving & working. Capitalism has successfully thrown them off its trail by throwing a litany of marginalized people in the way as scapegoats. “It’s those damn Mexicans taking your jobs! Don’t worry about your wages, worry that your children are getting the most innocuous of correct accounts of how Black & Brown have historically been treated in the States! Drag story hours are destroying America!”

In Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts & Reds, he describes the reaction of citizens in former communist nations in the 1990s, discovering with horror that the basic needs they had come to expect (housing, healthcare, food, education) were taken away and thrown into the free market where the workers were meant to become savage dogs, snapping and biting at each other to get even a crumb for themselves. It was too late at that point because their previous governments had been overthrown by decades of Western sanctions and interference. I recommend checking out Adam Curtis’s Traumazone (free to watch on YouTube) to see firsthand how life degraded in the former Soviet republics when communism ended. 

This film deceptively paints the Soviets as heartless, loveless, and cold. I’m not sure if the filmmakers were simply ignorant or intentionally deceitful because I don’t feel lovelessness when I read the work of Communist writers. I feel a tremendous love and concern for the state of humanity, a passion to forge a new system where we don’t have to watch people die in abject poverty from easily preventable situations that just need an even distribution of resources. I see this lack of care among people propagandized by capitalism, especially as of late.

I’ve come across a distressing large and growing number of self-proclaimed Liberals on social media who have said, “My rights are more important than Palestinian rights.” That is a direct quote. This is the inevitable outcome of an economic system in which everyone is sorted into winners & losers. I think a system under which communal living is foundational would produce far more joy & love than one where people are pitted against each other. Of course, there would be conflicts, but when the community solved them rather than outsourced them to the violent arm of the State, I would suspect they would come to better resolutions.

Soviet art is profoundly moving & beautiful. Their cinema was light years ahead in maturity and complexity compared to a single picture from the West. Even George Lucas, the creator of the capitalist darling Star Wars, has stated that making films under the Soviet system would have been preferable to Hollywood.

There is a price to our comforts in the West, though you wouldn’t know that from this film. What you won’t see in Ninotchka is that these precious jewels were dug up by African people who had been enslaved. You won’t see how indigenous people have their ancestral lands turned into extractive cesspools, making them unlivable. You won’t see the sweatshop laborers who process the raw resources, often becoming sick with little to no compensation for the sacrifice of their bodies & lives. You won’t see the people deemed redundant and tossed out on the street, vilified for apparently not crawling into a hold and dying fast enough. You won’t see the profiteers who spur on wars so that they can enrich themselves while people trying to live are crushed and blown apart.

Since October, I have seen the bodies of men, women, and children destroyed in every manner possible through the ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine. I have seen what a body looks like after it’s run over by a tank. I have seen bodies exhumed from mass graves with staples crudely placed where they had been cut open to have organs extracted. Or those who were zip-tied and buried alive, mouths still agape and stuffed with dirt as they gasped for breath. I have seen children whose skin has been melted off by weapons that made a tiny handful of Americans just a bit richer than they already were. I have watched multiple children take their final breaths as doctors nobly attempt to save them. I have seen parent after parent, orphaned child after orphaned child, scream out at the world for answers to why those they love have been taken from them. And you want to tell me capitalism is a good system?

All Lubitsch & company did here was carry water for an ideology that continues to kill millions today. It’s an utter shame and a waste of immense talent. On a technical level, Ninotchka is a wonderfully executed film. The actors are very good at communicating the intended effect. Those who are meant to be comic relief show expert time. The romance follows the typical Lubitsch structure, a formula that is hard to argue with. But the core message of the film couldn’t be more wrong. They can’t all be winners, folks.