Freeze Frame: NINOTCHKA

Before I’d ever heard the word “Ninotchka”, I knew the phrase “Garbo Laughs”.

It was one of those phrases I’d seen written on many classic film blogs – heck there’s even a classic blog I used to visit now and then that was named Garbo Laughs. So the idea of Greta Garbo chuckling was one I was familiar with, even if I wasn’t familiar with the context of how or why she was giggling. Then this past winter, my wife ordered a handful of classic dvd’s, and in the pile was a copy of NINOTCHKA. On the box it was written again in swooping cursive: “Garbo Laughs”.

Suddenly the veil was being lifted.

If the moment was used as a tagline, surely, I thought, the moment must be something special. After all, they didn’t give JAWS a tagline like “The shark swims!”. I later discovered that the tag was a play on the 1930 film ANNA CHRISTE, that used the tagline “Garbo Talks!”. So points for being meta, I suppose.

But what was this laugh, and why was it so special as to use it to sell the film.

The laugh itself comes a little more than a third into the film, when our hero Leon is eating in a working man’s diner with Ninotchka. He suggests that she needs to laugh more and takes it upon himself to get a rise out of her. He tells a bad joke, then another. When the second one doesn’t land, he decides to break it down and try again (I’ve done this – it never helps). It’s then, while spelling out the terrible joke that he falls out of his chair…

…and Garbo laughs.

The moment is every bit as transcendent as that iconic tagline makes it out to be. It’s a moment of pure joy and happiness. Her laugh is infectious, warm, and genuine. She laughs with her whole body, looking as though the laughter might lead to tears at any second. The moment betrays the steely communist woman we have come to know, and yet makes her all the more fascinating. It’s almost as if she is laughing for the first time and we are bearing witness.

The moment actually led me to wonder what got her to laugh so hard. I mean, it’s possible that she’s just that talented an actress…or that all she had to do was play off the others in the room yukking it up. But as amazing an actress as Greta Garbo was, I’d like to think that some one or something on set had to get a rise out of her. Perhaps someone off-camera told an especially great joke, or perhaps some wonderful piece of physical humour played out. Whatever it was, it led to something iconic.

The great thing about NINOTCHKA is the way we are so drawn into Garbo’s character from the moment she arrives. Even though she is all business, she has a bone-dry wit about her that makes her deeply endearing (“Comrades, you must have smoked a lot”). We see what Leon sees in her, and we too realize that we would become a dancing monkey in the hopes that we could amuse the steely Russian. One seldom wants the low-hanging fruit…we want to climb the tree to get the plump, juicy looking pieces at the top. So we identify with Leon, we hope he can connect, and in that moment that Ninotchka finally cracks into fits of laughter, we all enjoy the delicious fruit he has pulled down from the very top of the tree.

Certainly, it is the sort of moment worth immortalizing in a tagline.

 

Here’s three more from NINOTCHKA for the road…

 

This series of posts is inspired by the “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” series at The Film Experience. Do check out all of the awesome entires in their series so far