Lists
- ranked 40 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions
- ranked 52 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs
- ranked 68 in Chicago Tribune 100 Best Films of the Century
- ranked 229 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 243 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 255 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 267 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions Nominees
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
- one of TIME Magazine All-Time 100 Movies
It's never been clear to me whether Greta Garbo is a very good actress or a very bad one; here she plays an emotionless Soviet stereotype of a woman with a very thick accent, so I suppose it's a moot point. In Paris to arrange the sale of diamonds seized in the revolution, she is seduced by Leon (Melvyn Douglas), a sophisticated Frenchman inexplicably charmed by her directness.
Stridently anti-Russian, it's a romance wrapped in what might uncharitably be called racism (charitably, propaganda); Ninotchka is wowed by the fashions (not at all practical!), the music, the culture. In Paris she stays in a gilded hotel; scenes set in the USSR show cramped poverty.
But it's as fantastic as you'd expect from a movie written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It's sharp, witty, well-paced and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious.