Essay

THE WEST LAUGHS BACK AT THE SOVIETS.

NINOTCHKA (1939)

SLST 450

THE SOVIETS AND THE WEST REDISCOVER EACH OTHER

 The Great Depression in the West coincided

with the rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union

as part of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32)

 US diplomatic recognition (1933)

 1931-34: MGM planning the melodrama Soviet

with Clark Gable, directed by Frank Capra

 Stalinist dictatorship (since 1929); the Great

Terror (1934-38), “show trials.” Ideologically

incompatible.

 President of Columbia Pictures on the film

project Red Square: “Too much social stuff and

not enough sex.”

 1930: Sergei Eisenstein contracted by

Paramount Pictures to film Theodore Dreiser’s

An American Tragedy.

 Boris Shumiatsky (chairman of the State

Administration for Cinema Industry, 1930-38) and

his plan to build a Soviet Hollywood in the

Crimea.

Dnieper Dam

SPY FLICKS & IDEOLOGICAL COMEDIES

 Spy movies set in the Soviet Union – only in Britain.

British Agent (1934, based on the Lockhart Plot). The

commissar Elena. Forbidden Territory (1934). The singer

Valerie. Knight Without Armour (1937). Countess

Vladinoff.

 Grigorii Alexandrov’s Circus (1936), a musical comedy

with a strong ideological message. Marion Dixon and her

black baby find happiness in the Soviet Union. However,

the main foreign villain, Kneishitz, is a German.

 Ernst Lubitsch visiting Moscow when Circus opened.

NINOTCHKA (1939)  Greta Garbo starring as the special envoy Nina

Ivanovna (“Ninotchka”) Yakushova

 Three Soviet trade representatives selling in Paris

jewelry confiscated during the Revolution from the

Russian Grand Duchess Swana

 Count Leon d’Algout.

 Bela Lugosi as Commissar Razinin

 The 1957 remake as Silk Stockings. Similar

storyline in the 1956 film The Iron Petticoat.

Questions to consider:

 How is Ninotchka’s transformation portrayed in

the film? A transition from what and to what? The

three Russians – do they change too?

 Is the audience expected to sympathize with the

Grand Duchess (representing the old Russia)?

 How are the conditions within the Soviet Union

portrayed (and alluded to in various puns

throughout the film)?

 Can you tell who is NOT faking the Russian

accent? 

BRIEF DISCUSSION NOTES

 Ninotchka’s transformation: from robotic, inhumane,

sexless to “feminine” in the Western sense of the

1930s (consumerism, dependence on men)

 What’s laughed at: Not just the Bolshevik ideology,

but also the equality of Soviet women, who could be

engineers, pilots, ambassadors when Western women

could not (Alexandra Kollontai: rejected by Canada in

1922, but subsequently Soviet ambassador to Norway,

Mexico, Sweden)

 The three Russians

 Ninotchka/Grand Duchess Swana

 Conditions within the Soviet Union. The Great Terror

 Bela Lugosi as Commissar Razinin (“Is he still

alive?” / “Do you ever sleep?”)

Alexandra Kollontai