---
title: "Ninotchka"
year: 1939
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/ninotchka"
fi1m_score: 82
critics_score: 76
critics_reviews: 7
published: "2026-09-20T00:12:26.936541+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T00:12:52.079128+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Ninotchka (1939)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch · 1h 50m · MPA NR · Comedy, Romance

**Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 76 from 7 reviews

*In a sentence:* Three commissars discover room service, Garbo discovers a hat, and communism loses to Paris on points

> Lubitsch takes the sternest face in Hollywood and spends 110 minutes finding out what makes it laugh. The script by Brackett, Wilder and Reisch is as quick as any of the decade; the politics are soft, and the last half hour coasts.

## Synopsis

Paris. Three Soviet trade envoys, Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart) and Kopalski (Alexander Granach), arrive to sell the jewels confiscated from the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), who now lives in exile in the city. Within a day they have moved into the Royal Suite of their hotel and sent for the cigarette girls. Swana’s lover, Count Leon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas), hears of the sale from a waiter, Rakonin (Gregory Gaye), and files a claim to tie the jewels up in court. Moscow, losing patience, sends a special envoy: Nina Ivanovna Yakushova (Greta Garbo), known as Ninotchka, who steps off the train in a plain coat, refuses a porter on principle and inspects the suite with distaste. Looking for the Eiffel Tower, she asks a stranger on a street corner for directions. It is Leon.

## Review

Greta Garbo had spent a decade dying beautifully. *Anna Karenina*, *Camille*, the queen who gave up her throne: the studio had built her into the saddest face in Hollywood, then in 1939 handed her to Ernst Lubitsch and sold the result on two words and an exclamation mark. Garbo laughs. It is cheap marketing and an exact description. *Ninotchka* is 110 minutes of the sharpest hand at light comedy then working finding out what it would take to make that face crack.

The plot is the sale of some jewels. Three Soviet envoys, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach), arrive in Paris to turn the confiscated stones of the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire) into currency, and within an afternoon they have discovered the Royal Suite, room service and the cigarette girls. Swana’s lover, Count Leon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas), ties the sale up in court. Moscow sends Ninotchka (Garbo) to sort it out. The film is excellent for an hour and a quarter and merely good after that, and we recommend it with that caveat and one smaller one about its politics.

For the first forty minutes Garbo does almost nothing with her face, and it is some of the best comic acting of the decade. She asks a porter why he wants to carry her bags. She tells Leon to suppress his flirting. She looks at a hat in a shop window as though it were evidence. Walter Reisch, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder give her lines about mass trials and tractor output, and she says them straight, and the joke is that she means every word. Then comes the café. Leon tries a joke, tries another, and falls off his chair, and she laughs. So did we, and then we found we were more moved than a pratfall has any right to make anyone, because the film had held her still for so long that the laugh felt like a door opening rather than a gag landing.

William H. Daniels, who lit Garbo through most of her Hollywood career, shoots her hard and flat when she arrives and softer as Paris gets to her, and the change is gradual. Adrian puts her in a dark, square-shouldered suit that looks issued rather than bought, and puts Claire in gowns that look worth more than the jewels. The hat, when it comes, is exactly as silly as it needs to be. Werner R. Heymann’s score is Parisian in the way a postcard is Parisian, and knows it. Gene Ruggiero cuts without fuss and lets people finish their sentences, which in a Lubitsch film is most of the job.

Douglas plays Leon as a man who has never worked a day and is delighted to have found something he cannot buy. Claire’s Swana is the sharpest thing in the film, a woman who has lost a country and kept her manners, and her one long scene with Garbo has a bite the romance does not. Ruman, Bressart and Granach are lovable, and the film loves them a little too easily; their conversion to capitalism takes a minute and a bottle. Bela Lugosi turns up as Commissar Razinin, glares at everyone and leaves.

The politics are soft in both directions. The jokes about the purges, and there are several, are funny in the way jokes about something you have not seen are funny, and watched now they sit oddly. The film’s whole case for the West is that it has champagne, and its one visit to a Moscow flat is staged as a sketch. Some critics have found Lubitsch coarser here than in his early-thirties films, and they have a point. Once the jewels have done their work the story has to find a reason to keep going, and the reason it finds is the usual one.

Set against his own films, *Trouble in Paradise* is quicker and colder and *The Shop Around the Corner*, the following year, is kinder. *Ninotchka* is the one people remember, because of Garbo, and that is fair. Watch it with someone who has never seen her, and during the café scene watch their face rather than the screen.

*Fi1m score 82, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews lean warmly positive: six of the seven are in favour and none against. The praise clusters on Garbo. Critics agree that her turn from stern commissar to champagne-drinking lover carries the film, and more than one singles out the café scene in which she finally laughs as the moment it comes alive. Lubitsch’s direction is credited with keeping the political satire light and urbane, and the screenplay, with Wilder among its writers, is praised for its wit.

The reservations are mild and mostly about tone. The New Yorker finds the Moscow scenes close to burlesque and the ending conventional. Time Out, the one mixed voice, thinks the Lubitsch touch has grown cruder by the late 1930s and calls the film consistently amusing rather than the delight its reputation suggests. The later reviews treat its cartoon of Soviet life as a period curiosity rather than a flaw. The spread is narrow.

### Reviews we read (7)

- **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film one of the sprightliest comedies of the year, a gay, impertinent, and malicious satire that finds Garbo excelling in a dead-pan comedy role. Lubitsch's direction and the script are praised for their wit and for delivering a humorist's view of Soviet manners. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1939/11/10/archives/the-screen-in-review-ninotchka-an-impious-soviet-satire-directed-by.html)
- **Radio Times**, Tony Sloman (7.8/10): This is hailed as one of the funniest and most original comedies from Hollywood's greatest year, with Lubitsch's magic touch, witty screenplay by Wilder and others, and Garbo's charming transformation from stern commissar to lover. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-5juc4n/ninotchka/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Mark Chalon Smith (70/100, inferred): The critic highlights how Lubitsch both mocks and embraces Garbo's image, turning the severe bureaucrat into a champagne-loving bon vivant. The film's stylish construction and topical satire of Soviet life versus Western luxury are singled out as special achievements. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-21-ol-966-story.html)
- **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (70/100, inferred): The review notes that Garbo's laugh transforms her and fits the film's parlor satire on Soviet Russia, which is urbanely handled without excess. Lubitsch tones down the comedy effectively for the leads, though Moscow scenes verge on burlesque and the ending feels conventional. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/11/18/1939-11-18-101-tny-cards-000001767)
- **Time Out**, GB (65/100, inferred): The critic notes that while Ninotchka is not quite the delight history claims due to a crude and cynical Lubitsch touch by the late 1930s, it remains consistently amusing thanks to impish political jokes and Garbo's engaging performance. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/ninotchka)
- **Collider**, Thomas Butt (85/100, inferred): The critic praises Ninotchka as a charming romantic comedy that showcases Greta Garbo's comedic talents for the first time, thanks to Ernst Lubitsch's deft direction blending humor and sentiment. The piece singles out the café scene where Ninotchka finally laughs as a highlight of the film's emotional and narrative ingenuity. [Read](https://collider.com/greta-garbo-ninotchka/)
- **Paste**, Garrett Martin (75/100, inferred): The critic notes that Garbo's emotionless bureaucrat learns to love in Lubitsch’s pre-war classic, finding her transfixing in her first comedy with genuine romance. It singles out the fixed conception of Russian Communism in popular culture as an interesting early example. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/best-movies/the-best-movies-of-the-1930s)

## Details

- **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch
- **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch
- **Screenplay:** Walter Reisch, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
- **Story:** Melchior Lengyel
- **Cinematography:** William H. Daniels
- **Editor:** Gene Ruggiero
- **Music:** Werner R. Heymann
- **Costume design:** Adrian
- **Cast:** Greta Garbo as Nina "Ninotchka" Ivanovna Yakushova; Melvyn Douglas as Count Leon d'Algout; Ina Claire as Grand Duchess Swana; Bela Lugosi as Commissar Razinin; Sig Ruman as Comrade Iranoff; Felix Bressart as Comrade Buljanoff; Alexander Granach as Comrade Kopalski; Gregory Gaye as Count Alexis Rakonin
- **Runtime:** 1h 50m
- **Certificate (MPA):** NR
- **Release (the US):** 23 November 1939
- **Genres:** Comedy, Romance
- **Budget:** $1 million
- **Box office:** $2 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCCG5qSC1I

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-20.*

Also available in: BE, BG, CL, CZ, DE, DK, FI, GB, HR, IE, LT, NL, NO, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1940: Best Actress (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Story (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated)

## If you liked this

- *Trouble in Paradise* (1932): Lubitsch at his quickest and coldest; thieves in evening dress, nobody learns anything.
- *The Shop Around the Corner* (1940): The same director a year later, gentler, set in a Budapest shop that feels lived in.
- *Silk Stockings* (1957): The same story as a musical, with Cyd Charisse dancing where Garbo laughed.
- *One, Two, Three* (1961): Billy Wilder directs his own Cold War farce, faster and far less forgiving.
- *The Death of Stalin* (2017), Fi1m 83: The purges played for laughs by people who have read about them properly. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-death-of-stalin.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/ninotchka