“Ninotchka” (1939)
Greta Garbo was one of the first great movie stars; a Swedish beauty who broke out in the silent era and won four Oscar nominations for stunning performances in films like “Anna Christie,” “Romance” and “Anna Karenina.” But she wasn’t known for her sense of humor. Her roles exclusively involved heavy, dramatic subject matter, which is why it marked something of a genius stroke for Lubitsch, in one of the first major examples of casting a star against type, to bring her into comedy, selling “Ninotchka” with the tagline “Garbo Laughs!” (itself a nod to the “Anna Christie” tagline “Garbo Talks!”). The delightful 1939 comedy (written by Walter Reisch, with Lubitsch’s protégés Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett), sees Garbo play the title character, a Soviet envoy who comes to Paris to sell jewelery confiscated from the aristocracy, only to fall in love both the West and Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas), who’s out to take the jewelery back from the Grand Duchess to whom it used to belong. It’s unashamed propaganda, but propaganda with razor-sharp jokes and a feather-light touch, and one of the most purely enjoyable romantic comedies ever made. And the combination of a revelatory, luminous turn from Garbo with the trademark Lubitsch touch turns out to be a perfect fit. Garbo retired after only one more film, 1941’s “Two-Faced Woman,” and it’s hard not to wish, on the basis of this, that she’d discovered comedy, and Lubitsch, much earlier in her career.
“The Shop Around the Corner” (1940)
It’s not just the way that it directly inspired Nora Ephron‘s “You’ve Got Mail” that makes “The Shop Around the Corner” one of the major templates for the romantic comedy as we know it today — along with “It Happened One Night,” “Trouble In Paradise” and their ilk, it cements many of the conventions and plot devices of the genre. But it does so with a charm and grace, and a sense of authenticity, that over seventy years later still makes it hold up as one of the shining examples of the style. Based on the Hungarian play “Parfumerie” by Miklos Laszlo, and retaining a Budapest setting that gives it a timeless, fairy-tale feel, the film’s set at a luxury leather-goods store owned by the kindly but stubborn Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan, best known as the titular “Wizard of Oz“). Two of his employees, the long-serving Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and newcomer Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), form an instant dislike for each other, but as it turns out, they’ve been corresponding anonymously, unbeknownst to each other, and have fallen in love. The banter between Stewart and Sullavan (who manage to bury oodles of chemistry beneath the quarreling) is snappy and, in true Lubitsch fashion (the director actually considered it his favorite of his own works), unafraid to be sour in places, so their eventual delayed meet-cute feels sweet and entirely earned — even if it can feel frustrating that Stewart finds out earlier, but plays along. But Lubitsch’s eye wanders away from the duo, with a genuinely wrenching subplot about Mr. Matuschek being driven to the brink of suicide by his wife’s affair with an employee (the dapper Joseph Schildkraut), a welcome dose of reality that feels like a direct tonal inspiration for “The Apartment.” The film’s a pleasure to watch at any time of year — not least to the performances from Stewart, Sullavan, Morgan and William Tracy, as delivery boy Pepi — but as one of the great Christmas movies, feels particularly appropriate at this time of year.
