Ninotchka

Lubitsch's most famous comedy and the sharpest turn in Garbo's career. The campaign was one sentence: Garbo laughs. The Soviet government sends three envoys to Paris to sell the jewels of a duchess who fled. All three lose to the city. Moscow then sends Nina Ivanovna Yakushova, Ninotchka: a woman who never laughs, speaks in statistics and treats romance as inefficiency. Then she meets Leon. Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch wrote the script, and Melvyn Douglas plays Leon. Its best moment is not a grand love scene but Ninotchka laughing at a bad joke Leon tells in a restaurant. The laugh does not come from the joke; it comes from him falling off his chair. The film was banned in the Soviet Union. It took four Oscar nominations. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Hollywood comedy and sharp dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone who takes the politics seriously. The Soviet system is treated entirely as caricature, in a register that anticipates cold war propaganda.