To understand an old movie -- one made in the 1930s -- as well as one set outside the United States, takes a little effort. I don't know when you last studied the history of the former Soviet Union, but it's been a while for me -- it was still the Soviet Union then. But the Greta Garbo film "Ninotchka" is worth doing a quick skim of late 19th and early 20th century history. Then you can get maximum enjoyment from this classic film.
For over three hundred years -- from 1613 to 1917, the Romanov Family ruled the Russian Empire. The Empire had two huge problems at the end of the 19th century: countries like Poland deeply resented having their own cultures quashed and Russian language and culture put into place instead, and all the hardworking, cold and hungry citizens resented that a few people with inherited wealth lived in luxury and used soldiers to keep the population busy and quiet. The political theorist Karl Marx wrote and spoke about how a few people managed to grab and keep all the money and the good stuff, while nobody else got any of it. A group of people called Bolsheviks, who followed the breakaway leader Vladimir Lenin, forced the Romanvs into Siberian exile and took over the government. (The Romanovs and some of their staff and friends were later taken to a village in the Ural Mountains and executed, which the Soviets denied for years.) The website for the British Library has a very good timeline of the Russian Revolution.
As the movie "Ninotchka" opens, it's been some years since the revolution. Vladimir Lenin is dead, having been shot twice by a would-be assassin in 1918 and then suffering multiple strokes six years later. Since 1927 Josef Stalin has been the absolute ruler of the Soviet state, he and the Communist Party having given the Bolsheviks the heave-ho in the mid-20s. If you would like a more in-depth view on all this, you can find that HERE.
Stalinist Russia is not the share-and-share-alike state that idealistic revolutionaries wanted. Party leaders steal like crazy and corruption is everywhere. Also, the Communists need money. The Soviets have a lot of jewelry and valuables which once belonged to the Romanovs and other wealthy members of the nobility, who fled to Europe when the Bolsheviks took over.
The plot of "Ninotchka" comes out of all this upheaval. Three Soviet agents have been sent to Paris to sell some jewels confiscated from a duchess. This lady finds out that her jewelry is being sold, and she sends a penniless count to file legal paperwork to stall the sale. The down-on-his-luck count shows the Russian visitors a bit of Parisian night life to soften them them up in order to work out, um, a compromise on the legal matter. There are delays, of course, and the three agents are finding life in a Parisian hotel pretty nice, so they don't come back to Moscow right away with either jewelry or money. Then someone from Moscow is sent to see what the heck is going on.
The basic story of "Ninotchka" was written by Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian Jewish screenwriter who also wrote the story line for the wonderful Jack Benny/Carole Lombard film "To Be or Not To Be" (later remade with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft). The director for "Ninotchka" was another Jew, Ernst Lubitsch, whose father was born within the Russian Empire -- in Belarus-- and whose mother was German.
It matters that the story creator, some of the screenwriting team, and the director were all Jews. You're no doubt familiar with the McCarthy hearings and the blacklisting of left-leaning figures in Hollywood. Some of this ordeal was about actors, directors, and writers back in the 1930s who supported Communist fighters seeking to stop a fascist military leader (Francisco Franco) from taking power in Spain. And some of this was about Russia.
At the time "Ninotchka" was made, there was a deep rift between people who thought Russia should be seen in a negative light and those who wanted Russia's help in the war. Eastern European Jews who'd come to the United States quickly realized that their peasant lives had only been swapped out for the lives of factory drones. Add to this that Hitler's rise to power was being passively observed by the United States, even after 1938 when the Nazi leader forced Czech-heritage Germans to live under his control. The Soviets were pushing back against Germany, and even if it was out of self-interest, any support for the rest of Europe was needed support. American Jews were aware that average Americans saw the nightmare in Europe as a Jewish problem in a far-off land.
Despite their appreciation for Russian help in fighting off Germany, Jews and lefties were concerned about Stalin's death-grip on the Soviet state. It's clear that the team which made "Ninotchka" thought that Josef Stalin represented the corruption of the revolutionary dream. Just look at some of the scenes in "Ninotchka" -- here, the Russians involved in the jewelry fiasco are back in Moscow, and not happy to be there.
Here's another clip. In this one, the man who showed Ninotchka the Eiffel Tower wants to go to Moscow to visit his love, but a Russian official refuses, out of pigheaded dedication to bureaucratic nonsense, and gets a punch in the nose for it.
You can see this and I can see this. But Communist-hunters in the 1950s couldn't see it. After the Second World War ended, Americans didn't seem to have a much better grasp of basic Russian/European history than 21st century Americans have. Sigh. But today, we can use movies like "Ninotchka" to try and understand what people were going through in the first half of the 20th century.
And besides, Greta Garbo is just wonderful in it.
Next week: I visit the public library
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