Ninotchka

Ninotchka (1939) is Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy — watch online on iFILM, starring Greta Garbo alongside Melvyn Douglas, with a screenplay co-written by Billy Wilder.

Three Soviet envoys arrive in Paris to sell a cache of jewels confiscated from an exiled Russian duchess. They are immediately seduced by French restaurants and soft beds and make no progress. Moscow sends Ninotchka — a rigid, humourless party loyalist who has no use for capitalist sentiment or silk stockings. Count Leon, acting for the duchess, has to get those jewels back and decides the best angle is through her. She has no angle.

The promotional line "Garbo Laughs!" was not exaggeration — Garbo had only played tragedy until this point, and what Lubitsch draws out of her is dry, precise, and genuinely funny. The film works as Soviet satire and as a love story, and it does both without letting either flatten the other. Wilder's hand is visible in every scene where the joke lands sideways instead of straight on. A comedy that has aged better than most of its era. Stream Ninotchka (1939) on iFILM.