Transcript Ninotchka

Although comic types metamorphosed into the sophisticated, low-life, anarchistic,
sentimental, folksy, screwball, populist, or romantic, the production trend remained a
key component of every studio’s roster.
(Balio, GD 256)
Steve Vineberg, High Comedy in American Movies: Class and Humor from the 1920s to the
Present (2005)
THIS PICTURE TAKES PLACE IN
PARIS IN THOSE WONDERFUL DAYS
WHEN A SIREN WAS A BRUNETTE
AND NOT AN ALARM..AND IF A
FRENCHMAN TURNED OUT THE
LIGHT IT WAS NOT ON ACCOUNT
OF AN AIR RAID!
Ninotchka’s opening title (added between end of shooting [27 July 1939]
and premiere [6 October 1939])
But what is particularly misleading about the title is that it suggests a more
perfect past, a past free from all tensions and single-mindedly devoted to the
clichéd French pursuit of love. The near paradise the title portrays is
especially out of keeping with the drama’s whole host of oppositions that
promise no easy resolution:
capitalist /
selfish
/
aristocrat /
idler
/
romance /
irony
/
private
/
frivolous /
fun
/
communist
selfless
peasant
worker
biology
directness
public
serious
work
…one of the most striking aspects of this film as a product of popular
American culture is how many positive attributes in this dialectical list
gravitate to the communist pole, while the capitalist side has more than its
fair share of negative qualities.
William Paul, Ernst Lubitsch’s American Comedy (Columbia U.P., 1983), 206
Joan Crawford, by Eve Arnold, 1959
Garbo on the screen
Garbo “at work”
Garbo “at home”
Garbo in public
Stars articulate what it is to be a human being in contemporary society; that is,
they express the particular notion we hold of the person, of the “individual.”They
do so complexly, variously—they are not straightforward affirmations of
individualism. On the contrary, they articulate both the promise and the difficulty
that the notion of individuality presents for all of us who live by it…
At its most optimistic, the social world is seen in the conception to emanate from
the individual, and each person is seen to “make” his or her own life. However, this
is not necessary to the concept. What is central is the idea of the separable,
coherent quality, located “inside” in consciousness and variously termed “the self,”
“the soul,” “the subject,” and so on. This is counterposed to “society,” something
seen as logically distinct from the individuals who compose it, and very often as
inimical to them. If in ideas of “triumphant individualism” individuals are seen to
determine society, in ideas of “alienation” individuals are seen as cut adrift from
and dominated, battered by the anonymity of society. Both views retain the notion
of the individual as separate, irreducible, unique.
Dyer, from Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Introduction
What is at stake…is the degree to which, and manner in which, what the star
really is can be located in some inner, private, essential core. This is how the
star phenomenon reproduces the overriding ideology of the person in
contemporary society. But the star phenomenon cannot help being also
about the person in public. Stars, after all, are always inescapably people in
public…The private/public, individual/society dichotomy can be embodied by
stars in various ways; the emphasis can fall at either end of the spectrum,
although it usually falls at the private, authentic, sincere end. Mostly too there
is a sense of “really” in play—people/stars are really themselves in private or
perhaps in public but at any rate somewhere. However, it is one of the ironies
of the whole star phenomenon that all these assertions of the reality of the
inner self or of public life take place in one of the aspects of modern life that
is most associated with the invasion and destruction of the inner self and
corruptibility of public life, namely the mass media.
Dyer, from Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Introduction
So many times over the years since my “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema” article was published in Screen, I have been asked why I only
used the male third person singular to stand in for the spectator. At the
time, I was interested in the relationship between the image of woman on
the screen and the “masculinisation” of the spectator position, regardless
of the actual sex (or possible deviance) of any real live moviegoer. In-built
patterns of pleasure and identification impose masculinity as “point of
view”; a point of view which is also manifest in the general use of a
masculine third person. However, the persistent question “what about the
women in the audience?” and my own love of Hollywood melodrama
(equally shelved as an issue in “Visual Pleasure”) combined to convince
me that, however ironically it had been intended originally, the male third
person closed off avenues of inquiry that should be followed up.
Mulvey, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun
(1946),” 1981