Comrade X

An American correspondent working in Moscow smuggles his stories out past the censors. Someone who finds out corners him with blackmail: he is to get a woman out of the Soviet Union. She is a committed communist with no intention of leaving, which makes his job far harder than he expected. Directed by King Vidor, this MGM comedy follows the road Ninotchka had opened a year earlier: a fast-talking romantic comedy at the expense of the Soviet system. The friction between Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr is the engine. The political side it takes is out in the open and the film does not hide it; as a Soviet satire made in America in 1940 it also carries the view of its own moment intact. The tank sequence at the end is its wildest passage.