FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Ernst Lubitsch - Ninotschka 

When I was a child, listening to adults, I thought I could never learn this language. I thought maybe I could watch some movies to find out what adults were like. Later as an adult, my enjoyment of it faded. And in the cinema? In the movies today, you learn mostly how teenagers think and feel. Teenagers. Not so in the comedies of Ernst Lubitsch! Lubitsch's films are about people who are tremendously grown up! Suave and cynical and sophisticated. And slick. They almost glide across the parquet, they are so slippery. Lubitsch loved love triangle stories with strong sexual undertones. But the Berliner from Spandau never had any trouble with the American censors! Possibly the only Hollywood director of distinction! Lubitsch's characters often run the risk of confusing sex with love, which is amazingly openly portrayed. They know exactly what they want and hide it under the surface of cultivated banter (which probably also fooled the censors). What strong sex urges are present are simply hidden by the dialogue. The dialogues of Romantic Screwball Comedy. Often called the "Lubitsch Touch." Ernst Lubitsch, small and simple, began directing films as early as 1915 in Berlin. In Babelsberg and there he even discovered world stars like Pola Negri. It was Mary Pickford who lured him to Hollywood in the 20s. There he made definitive adult films like Ninotchka (based on Billy Wilder's screenplay). Stalin probably hated Ninotchka and today, with the Russians invading Ukraine, Ninotchka is the film of the hour. For here Greta Garbo makes us laugh at the expense of the USSR (and she laughs herself!). Lubitsch takes a humorous look at the Communists, who have read Marx but have never been able to spare even a comic thought. They are sober people who never mouth the word "love" - and probably see love more as a biological process. They also never drink champagne, but goat's milk. It's healthier. And a warm spring morning in Paris is reduced to the weather report. Such a person is Garbo's Ninotchka, and around her Lubitsch designed a whole series of other cartoon characters. But eventually Comrade Ninotchka loses herself, even buys a frivolous hat and falls in love.... And while thinking about love in Paris, she even forgets to march in step during the Moscow May Parade.... Ninotchka is, quite incidentally, Greta Garbo's delightful debut as a comedienne. She remains Garbo, a kind of female Buster Keaton, because she never contorts her face. So the comrade is allowed to say sentences like: "The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians. Without making a face. Or she guarantees that there will be no problems with towels in Moscow hotels. They are changed every week. As the saying goes, neither Stalin nor his successor Putin can like that.