Today from 18:30-21.30 hrs, the UvA Film Club will host their next screening in HVL/BuzzHouse’s Co-Working Space! This week's film is Ninotchka (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1939), with an introduction by Jette Kalma.

Three Soviet agents in Paris tasked with the selling of jewelry acquired during the revolution find themselves in difficulties. Another agent gets sent to aid the three, it ends up being Ninotchka, a cold stern woman who gets straight to the point. But her time in Paris gets complicated when confronted with the temptations of a capitalist society and especially the men that inhabit it. Ninotchka, played marvelously by MGM star Greta Garbo who would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for the role, falls for the man who is helping the original owner of the jewelry regain ownership.

The romantic comedy contains broad clashes between white and red Russia, casually touches on the recent outbreak of World War Two and the issues of communism and capitalism alike. This film, functioning as a piece of American propaganda that caricatures Soviet Russia, interestingly does not leave the capitalist world unscathed. The film gives an interesting, humorous pre-cold war and pre-McCarthyism view on Soviet Russia and Paris and by extension, Hollywood. But beyond the political implications the film is a soppy romantic film perfectly done through Ernst Lubitsch’s directing and the undeniable chemistry between Melvyn Douglas and Greta Garbo.