BEFORE: Happy Valentine's Day! While I can't say yet whether this film will be the most romantic movie of the week (because apparently it's about a stern Russian woman) it's at least got a title that evokes the holiday - candy, flowers, and some lingerie, right? Ooh la la...
Tomorrow, February 15, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", it's the nominees and winners for Best Original Screenplay. Why they stopped giving out awards for Best UN-original Screenplay, I have no idea. Here's the schedule:
6:15 am "Interrupted Melody" (1955)
8:15 am "The Naked Spur" (1953)
10:00 am "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)
12:00 pm "Titanic" (1953)
2:00 pm "Designing Woman" (1957)
4:00 pm "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947)
6:00 pm "Woman of the Year" (1942)
8:00 pm "Splendor in the Grass" (1961)
10:15 pm "Pillow Talk" (1959)
12:15 am "The Candidate" (1972)
2:15 am "The Producers" (1967)
4:00 am "Citizen Kane" (1941)
Hmm, still working on a Valentine's Day theme, it seems, at least until midnight rolls around. I'm getting better numbers today, with 7 out of 12 seen: "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer", "Woman of the Year", "Splendor in the Grass", "Pillow Talk", "The Candidate", "The Producers" and of course, "Citizen Kane". Another 7 out of 12 brings my total up to 60 out of 165. Up again to 36.4%
And if I'm scoring these February films by wins and losses (based on whether love wins out in the end, in some form) then I think that after the first half of the month, the score is 9 wins to 3 losses with 2 ties. I expect another win tonight as Fred Astaire carries over from "Flying Down to Rio".
THE PLOT: After three bumbling Soviet agents fail in their mission to retrieve a straying Soviet composer from Paris, the beautiful, ultra-serious Ninotchka is sent to complete their mission and bring them back. She starts out condemning the decadent West, but gradually falls under its spell with the help of an American movie producer.
AFTER: Eh, this one was just all right for me. Maybe I'm just burned out on Fred Astaire after watching 14 of his films last year, and another two already this week. I'm just not a big dance fan, though I still recognize that he was a hell of a dancer - it's still not my thing though. But I'm going to soldier on through, two more Astaire films this week and then I'm on to Howard Keel - and that dreaded stop in the chain is just looming at the end of that. Maybe it won't be so bad, I just have to consider that the end of one chain means I get to start up another one, right? Still, it doesn't feel right somehow.
I never saw "Ninotchka", and maybe now I don't have to...? It seems that "Silk Stockings" changed quite a bit of the original story, they really just kept the fact that three Soviet agents didn't want to return to Moscow and then a female agent is sent to get them back. And then in the 1970's, I think they re-made this again as "The Spy Who Loved Me", adding James Bond into the mix. Just kidding - they really remade this again into "Rocky IV".
It's clear that the writer here knew very little about what went on behind the Iron Curtain, and next to nothing about communism and socialism - someone thought that there would be a "Commissar of Art", like that was a thing! How romance worked in Soviet Russia seemed even more of a mystery, according to this film, a Soviet man would say "Hey, you, come here." to a Soviet woman, and that would be enough for them to make out. Somehow I doubt that's how it worked, not even in the 1950's.
Of course, we know that eventually Astaire's character is going to wear Ninotchka down, despite her lack of emotion, and he's going to do it through the power of dance. But why is he playing a film producer at the start of the film, and then he's a featured dancer in a stage production at the end? This doesn't seem to follow logically, those are two very different skill sets and I don't know of any Hollywood producers who are also professional dancers. Obviously they had to work in one more dance number, but you just can't throw the facts of the story out the window to do that.
The songs here was composed by Cole Porter, and I'm a little hit-or-miss with Cole Porter, once you get past "It's De-Lovely", "You're the Top" and "I Get a Kick Out of You". I mean, who goes around today singing "Begin the Beguine", really? This film has such "catchy" Cole Porter numbers as "Stereophonic Sound", "Fated to be Mated" and "It's a Chemical Reaction, That's All". Not exactly songs that were number one with a bullet. Then there's a song that rhymes "Siberia" with "hysteria", "diptheria" and "superia", and I can't even. And the last number told us that rock and roll was dead, and would be replaced with "The Ritz Roll and Rock". I don't know what made Cole Porter think in 1954 that rock & roll wouldn't last, but it sure lasted longer than he did.
Also starring Cyd Charisse (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), Janis Paige, Peter Lorre (last seen in "Arsenic and Old Lace"), George Tobias (last seen in "Sergeant York"), Jules Munshin (last seen in "On the Town"), Joseph Buloff (last seen in "Reds"), Wim Sonneveld.
RATING: 5 out of 10 capitalist oppressors
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