Ninotchka Director: Ernst Lubitsch. USA, 1939. 110 min. (U) Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi

WFC celebrates the end of our 2019 season with this enduring, endearing comedy. Greta Garbo stars in her first comic role, as a Soviet envoy exposed to the temptations of Paris & man-about-town Melvyn Douglas.

German-expat director Ernst Lubitsch made a string of exquisite, influential 1930s Hollywood comedies displaying the acclaimed ‘Lubitsch Touch’. He was highly admired by fellow film-makers: Jean Renoir credited him with inventing modern Hollywood; Orson Welles called him a “giant” whose “talent and originality are stupefying”; and Some Like it Hot director Billy Wilder (who co-wrote Ninotchka along with Charles Brackett & Walter Reisch) famously had a sign on his office wall saying ‘How would Lubitsch do it?’

“No computer trick is as glorious as the thaw that melts icy Greta Garbo into fire … Ninotchka is delicate flirtation and political satire made into a perfect whole, and a reminder of skills that studio writers have largely lost.” Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

“At least twice a day the most dignified human being is ridiculous.” Ernst Lubitsch

Film historian Nick Smedley joins us for a post-screening Q&A. Make a note of your programme notes number: a lucky audience member will receive a copy of Nick’s book about Lubitsch, Wilder & Fritz Lang: A Divided World: Hollywood Cinema & Émigré Directors in the Era of Roosevelt & Hitler 1933- 48. Nick previously spoke at WFC about Preston Sturges’ A Palm Beach Story, and has just published (with Tom Sturges) Preston Sturges: the Last Years of Hollywood’s First Writer-Director.

National Board of Review Best Acting award (Garbo), 4 Oscar noms. Preserved in USA National Film Registry.

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