And still more Ernst Lubitsch completism. He directed a screenplay from the very strong team of Charles Brackett (The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950)), Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch, based on an original story by Melchior Lengyel (To Be or Not to Be (1942)). It seems this was the first thing I'd seen Greta Garbo in and it's coincidentally her highest-rated feature at IMDB. Over several nights.
Three Soviet comrade-stooges are sent to Paris to flog some jewels expropriated from an Russian aristocrat (Ina Claire, reminding me a bit of no-fuss Piper Laurie in Twin Peaks) who just happens to reside there. She finds out about this in the usual screwy/small world way and her not-as-rusted-on-as-she-thought paramour Melvyn Douglas offers to help her lay claim to them. Garbo is sent to close the transaction (so the people don't starve) and of course she and Douglas meet cute and so forth. The romance is heavy-handed and the entirety is all very predictable but is made bearable by some very funny dialogue.
Garbo started out as robotic as Arnie as a Soviet fake human apparatchik but softened into dreaminess on return to privation in dreary Moscow. I was so envious of her ability to ignore irrelevant bullshit all the way along. Her performance got her an Oscar nom. Bela Lugosi appeared late-on as a commissar.
Frank S. Nugent: "gay and impertinent and malicious." This was in the time when Stalin wasn't yet beyond the pale. IMDB trivia: are we really to believe that Arnie studied Garbo's performances?
