Word: ninotchkas
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...Ninotchka, Director Ernst Lubitsch deliciously kidded the vagaries of the Soviets; in To Be he succeeds-as Hollywood had not yet done-in deftly ridiculing Hitler and his Nazis. His story is an actor's-eye-view of the Nazi occupation of Poland. As the Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne of Warsaw's Polski troupe, the Turas (Jack Benny and Miss Lombard) are a brittle couple. Their favorite soliloquy is Hamlet's To be, or not to be. . . . He likes to deliver it because it flatters his ego, at length; she likes it because it gives her time...
This is M.G.M.'s idea of modernizing Garbo. Perhaps M.G.M. thought that, because Garbo played a captivating brand of comedy in Ninotchka two years ago, she ought to go on to slapstick. But Ninotchka was played against a dramatic background. Two-Faced Woman is neither dramatic nor funny (except for some hilarious stunt-skiing sequences); it is a trick played on a beautiful, shy, profoundly feminine actress...
...bitter-mouthed woman who finally laughed in Ninotchka has been teaching her much-maligned feet a few things. So the refrain of the next big Garbo picture may be: "Garbo dances...
...includes Miss Lamarr who strolls placidly through the role of a Soviet streetcar motorman intent on the cause. Scripters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer's picture of bungling and dawdling inside the Soviet is a lot less witty, and less tender than Greta Garbo's memorable film Ninotchka. But their slapstick commentary is a relief from the realities of headlines...
...Stayed for Breakfast," variation allegro on the Ninotchka theme, casts McIvyn Douglas as the party-liner seduced by the very un-proletarian charms of Loretta Young. Catching the flavor of a Paris that is no more, the film combines the wit of the French with the crackling pace of the American movies. But indeed ironic is the script's playful treatment of a political force which contributed so much to the downfall of that Paris which it eulogizes...