NINOTCHKA

DIRECTOR: Ernst Lubitsch
WRITERS: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, based on a story by Melchior Lengyel
STARS: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Ina Claire, Sig Rumann, Alexander Granach, Felix Bressart, Bela Lugosi
1939, 110m
Academy Award nomination: Best Picture

"This light, satirical comedy has the nonchalance and sophistication that were [Lubitsch's] trademark." -- Pauline Kael

"A gay and impertinent and malicious show which never pulls its punchlines and finds the screen's austere first lady of drama playing a dead-pan comedy role with the assurance of a Buster Keaton...Stalin won't like it; but unless your tastes hew too closely to the party line, we think you will, immensely." -- New York Times (1939)

"...A new apprehension was added by the slogan "Garbo laughs" (no slogan has been plugged so relentlessly since "Chaplin talks"). One expected the laughter to creak a little with greatness; but this is not merely a Garbo film, it is a Lubitsch film, and the result is enchanting." -- Graham Greene (1939)

“Lubitsch’s first film in the authentic screwball style: a true comedy of romantic liberation. Ninotchka was as truly a transformation for Lubitsch as it was for Garbo...Once Ninotchka laughs, the movie becomes romantic in an eager, full-hearted way that almost nothing else in the Lubitsch canon comes close to.” – James Harvey

"From the moment she steps off a train in her commissar's costume, Garbo's exqusitive gravity of expression and the metronomic delivery of her lines are as profoundly hilarious as anything in the history of talking pictures." -- Andrew Sarris.

SHOWTIMES: 1:00, 5:10, 9:20