Here Garbo plays a Soviet official sent to Paris to oversee three Marx Brother type Soviet loons who have bungled their attempts to sell a priceless bit of jewellery which, it turns out, belonged to an exiled Russian royal now in Paris, who wants them back.
Garbo speaks Russian in a dour, atonal voice tapering down at the end, like Lotte Lenya's Klebb in From Russia With Love. She has the hooded eyelids and joyless expression of Macca's Linda when made to shake the tambourine to Mul of Kyntyre in Wings.
All the Parisians are American actors. The one who woos Garbo's inscrutable Red is Melvyn Douglas, unrecognisable from his later role as Paul Newman's father in Hud.
Sadly Douglas sank the film for me. It starts off very well, it's Top Hat territory really: mistaken identity, a suspicious hotel concierge, art deco apartments: all shiny surfaces and those big pannelled doors that slide open and shut. But Douglas is too sexless to be a leading man; you need a roguish charmer like Fred Astaire and once I realised how perfect he would have been in the role, I grew to loathe Douglas who put me in mind of the actor who played Watson opposite Rathbone in the Sherlock Holmes films, or even the headmaster in Ferris Bueller -certainly not leading man material. You want the woman to submit in a battle of sexes comedy because she'll be on to a winner, but here I found myself hoping she'd hold out against him. Why not ask Maurice Chevalier to do the role? I guess they needed an American lead.
Also, the credit crunch and the UK's current drift to bankruptcy makes this not such an amusing watch: when Garbo's dour Russian shakes her head and says: "Any culture that allows women to wear such a silly hat cannot be long for this world!", or words to that effect, it's an uncomfortable moment. Because it really is a silly hat... Later, Garbo is seen wearing it once she 'sees the light' regarding Western capitalist ways. It's like having an Iranian woman deciding that Heat magazine is actually a jolly good read on her visit to the UK...
When Douglas is off screen, I enjoy the film, but otherwise I had to skip to the end. He talks to Garbo like he's a father indulging a daughter, really quite irritating. Garbo is very good, though her thawing is a bit quick when it happens.
Garbo speaks Russian in a dour, atonal voice tapering down at the end, like Lotte Lenya's Klebb in From Russia With Love. She has the hooded eyelids and joyless expression of Macca's Linda when made to shake the tambourine to Mul of Kyntyre in Wings.
All the Parisians are American actors. The one who woos Garbo's inscrutable Red is Melvyn Douglas, unrecognisable from his later role as Paul Newman's father in Hud.
Sadly Douglas sank the film for me. It starts off very well, it's Top Hat territory really: mistaken identity, a suspicious hotel concierge, art deco apartments: all shiny surfaces and those big pannelled doors that slide open and shut. But Douglas is too sexless to be a leading man; you need a roguish charmer like Fred Astaire and once I realised how perfect he would have been in the role, I grew to loathe Douglas who put me in mind of the actor who played Watson opposite Rathbone in the Sherlock Holmes films, or even the headmaster in Ferris Bueller -certainly not leading man material. You want the woman to submit in a battle of sexes comedy because she'll be on to a winner, but here I found myself hoping she'd hold out against him. Why not ask Maurice Chevalier to do the role? I guess they needed an American lead.
Also, the credit crunch and the UK's current drift to bankruptcy makes this not such an amusing watch: when Garbo's dour Russian shakes her head and says: "Any culture that allows women to wear such a silly hat cannot be long for this world!", or words to that effect, it's an uncomfortable moment. Because it really is a silly hat... Later, Garbo is seen wearing it once she 'sees the light' regarding Western capitalist ways. It's like having an Iranian woman deciding that Heat magazine is actually a jolly good read on her visit to the UK...
When Douglas is off screen, I enjoy the film, but otherwise I had to skip to the end. He talks to Garbo like he's a father indulging a daughter, really quite irritating. Garbo is very good, though her thawing is a bit quick when it happens.