Ready for His Close-Up: The Films of Billy Wilder
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch; US, 1939)
- When
- Sat Feb 14, 2015
- Where
- PFA Theater
- Time
- 6:30pm
- Cost
- $5.50 - $9.50
- Tags
- Movies, Comedy, Film Screenings
Description
"Garbo laughs!' said the ads for Ninotchka . . . an event on a par with “Garbo talks!,” the 1930 slogan that heralded her talkie debut in Anna Christie. Garbo—the paradigm for all stars in her beauty and mystery and final inaccessibility—was now a screwball heroine, too. And the mystery compounded: she was funny . . . One of the elements of the Garbo mystique was always the degree to which she could make idealism seem as much a felt human need as love or food. So that in Ninotchka she can speak of getting “foreign currency to buy tractors” (Lubitsch gives her a full glowing close-up) and be powerfully moving as she does so. Garbo, Lubitsch, and the screwball comedy come together in this film in a most astonishing result: the closest thing to a convincing socialist heroine the English-speaking cinema has yet produced. It's a nice payoff to the screwball tradition: that it had the freedom to offer even this surprise. —James Harvey, Romantic Comedy• Written by Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch, Charles Brackett, from an original story by Melchior Lengyel. Photographed by William Daniels. With Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi. (110 mins, B&W, DCP, From Warner Bros.)
More Info
- Link
- http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN21942
- Call
- (510) 642-1412
- Call
- 510.642.5249 (Box Office)
- Contact Form (account required)
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