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Ninotchka
''Ninotchka'' is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. ''Ninotchka'' is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. It is one of the first American films which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years. Plot Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach), three agents from the Russian Board of Trade arrive in Paris to sell jewelry confiscated from the aristocracy during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Count Alexis Rakonin (Gregory Gaye), a White Russian nobleman reduce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ninotchka (1939) Trailer 3
''Ninotchka'' is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. ''Ninotchka'' is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. It is one of the first American films which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years. In 1990, ''Ninotchka'' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, ''Time'' also included the film on the magazine's list of "All-Time 100 Movies". Plot Iranoff ( Sig Rum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film '' The Saga of Gösta Berling''. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She stirred interest with her first American silent film, '' Torrent'' (1926). Garbo's performance in ''Flesh and the Devil'' (1927), her third movie, made her an international star. In 1928, Garbo starred in '' A Woman of Affairs,'' which catapulted her at MGM to its highest box-office star, surpassing the long-reign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director eight times, winning twice, and for a screenplay Academy Award 13 times, winning three times. Wilder became a screenwriter while living in Berlin. The rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany saw him move to Paris. He then moved to Hollywood in 1933, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film ''Ninotchka'' (1939). Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir adaptation of the novel '' Double Indemnity'' (1944), for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler. Wilder won th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas (born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981) was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy ''Ninotchka'' (1939) with Greta Garbo. Douglas later played mature and fatherly characters, as in his Academy Award-winning performances in '' Hud'' (1963) and '' Being There'' (1979) and his Academy Award–nominated performance in '' I Never Sang for My Father'' (1970). Douglas was one of 24 performers to win the Triple Crown of Acting. In the last few years of his life Douglas appeared in films with supernatural stories involving ghosts. Douglas appeared as "Senator Joseph Carmichael" in '' The Changeling'' in 1980 and ''Ghost Story'' in 1981 in his final completed film role. Early life Douglas was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a concert pianist and composer. His father was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ina Claire
Ina Claire (born Ina Fagan; October 15, 1893February 21, 1985) was an American stage and film actress. Early years Ina Fagan was born October 15, 1893 in Washington, D.C. After the death of her father, Claire began doing imitations of fellow boarders in the boarding house where she and her mother, Cora, and brother, Allen, were forced to live. Claire's mother took her out of school in the eighth grade, and she used her mother's maiden name when she began her career appearing in vaudeville. In 1906, she gave a recitation as the grand finale of a program presented by Miss Cora B. Shreve's pupils in Washington, D.C. She was identified in a newspaper article as Ina Claire Fagan. Career Claire made her professional stage debut in October 1907 in Elmira, New York. She played Florie in a production of ''The Fatal Flower'' — the beginning of a two-year contract. In 1909, she appeared in a vaudeville act entitled "Dainty Mimic", which included an imitation of actor Harry Lauder. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Brackett
Charles William Brackett (November 26, 1892 – March 9, 1969) was an American screenwriter and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films. Life and career Brackett was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Mary Emma Corliss and New York State Senator, lawyer, and banker Edgar Truman Brackett. The family's roots traced back to the arrival of Richard Brackett in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, near present-day Springfield, Massachusetts. His mother's uncle, George Henry Corliss, built the Centennial Engine that powered the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A 1915 graduate of Williams College, he earned his law degree from Harvard University. He joined the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War I. He was awarded the French Medal of Honor. He was a frequent contributor to the ''Saturday Evening Post'', ''Collier's'', and ''Vanity Fair'', and a drama critic for ''The New Yorker''. He wrote five novels: ''The Counsel of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch". Among his best known works are '' Trouble in Paradise'', ''Design for Living'', ''Ninotchka'', ''The Shop Around the Corner'', ''To Be or Not to Be'' and '' Heaven Can Wait''. In 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. Early life Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin, the son of Simon Lubitsch, a tailor, and Anna (née) Lindenstaedt. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish; his father was born in Grodno in the Russian Empire (now Belarus), and his mother was from Wriezen outside Berlin. He turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911 was a member of Max Reinhard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Felix Bressart
Felix Bressart (March 2, 1892 – March 17, 1949) was a German-American actor of stage and screen. Life and career Bressart (pronounced "BRESS-ert") was born in East Prussia, Germany (now part of Russia). His acting debut came in 1914 as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night," and he went on to act in Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. He was an experienced stage actor when he had his film debut in 1927. He began as a supporting actor, for example as the Bailiff in the box-office hit '' Die Drei von der Tankstelle'' (1930), but soon established himself in leading roles of minor movies. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, the Jewish Bressart left Germany and continued his career in German-speaking movies in Austria, where Jewish artists were still relatively safe. After acting in forty German films, he emigrated to the United States in 1936. One of Bressart's former European colleagues was Joe Pasternak, who had become a Hollywood producer. Bressart's f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Granach
Alexander Granach (April 18, 1890 – March 14, 1945) was a German-Austrian actor in the 1920s and 1930s who emigrated to the United States in 1938. Life and career Granach was born Schaje Granoch in Werbowitz (Wierzbowce/Werbiwci) (Austrian Galicia then, now ''Verbivtsi'', Kolomyia Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine), to Jewish parents and rose to theatrical prominence at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Granach entered films in 1922; among the most widely exhibited of his silent efforts was ''Nosferatu'' (1922), F.W. Murnau’s loose adaptation of ''Dracula'', in which the actor was cast as Knock, the film's counterpart to Renfield. He co-starred in such major early German talkies as '' Kameradschaft'' (1931). The Jewish Granach fled to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. When the Soviet Union also proved inhospitable, he settled in Hollywood, where he made his first American film appearance as Kopalski in ''Ninotchka'' (1939) starring Greta Garb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregory Gaye
Gregory Gaye (born Grigoriy Grigoryevich Ge; October 10, 1900 – August 23, 1993) was a Russian-American character actor. The son of an actor, he was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the uncle of actor George Gaynes. He was a cadet in the Imperial Russian Navy and began his stage career in Europe and in the Orient before going to the United States after the Russian Revolution in 1923. He appeared in small roles in over a hundred movies. Career His first was a bit part in the 1928 John Barrymore silent film ''Tempest'', set during the Russian Revolution. His first credited role was as Prince Ordinsky in the 1929 Will Rogers comedy '' They Had to See Paris''. Gaye appeared in three of Rogers' movies including; '' Young as You Feel'' and '' Handy Andy''. Later in 1929, Gaye received a bit part in the John Ford film '' The Black Watch'' starring Victor McLaglen ( John Wayne and Randolph Scott also had bit parts in this movie). In 1930, Gaye received a good role as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Award For Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actor winner. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in '' 7th Heaven'', '' Street Angel'', and ''Sunrise''. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. However, during the 3rd ceremony held in 1930, only one of those films was cited in e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melchior Lengyel
Melchior Lengyel (born Menyhért Lebovics; hu, Lengyel Menyhért; 12 January 1880 – 23 October 1974) was a Hungarian writer, dramatist, and film screenwriter. Biography Lengyel was born Menyhért Lebovics in Balmazújváros, Hungary. He started his career as a journalist. He worked first in Kassa (Košice), then later in Budapest. His first play, ''A nagy fejedelem'' (''The Great Prince'') was performed by the Thalia Company in 1907. The Hungarian National Theatre performed his next drama ''A hálás utókor'' (''The Grateful Posterity'') in 1908 for which he received the Vojnits Award from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, given every year for the best play. ''Taifun'' (''Typhoon''), one of his plays, written in 1909, became a worldwide success and is still performed today. It was adapted to the screen in the United States in 1914. His articles were often published in ''Nyugat'' (''West''), the most important Hungarian literary journal in the first half of the 20th centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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