As Good As It Gets

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Comrade X (1940)Just before we got into World War II, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a non- aggression pact. Mac Thompson (Clark Gable) is a foreign correspondent who has been sneaking out uncensored news out of Soviet Russia. The secret police are suspicious of him, but it's the hotel's valet, Igor Yahupitz (Felix Bressart) who knows that it's Mac. He tells Mac that if he can smuggle his daughter, Theodore (Hedy Lamarr) out of the Soviet Union, into America, he won't tell anybody.The fly in the ointment is that Theodore is a loyal Communist and, just like in Ninotchka (1939), Mac has got to convince her to leave her beloved country and go with him, all while trying to stay away from the Commissars. Of course all of the upper ranking Soviet officers are worried about being killed off in Stalin's Purge.King Vidor directed this fast-paced anti-communist comedy with a screenplay written by Ben Hecht. Jane Wilson (smart-mouthed Eve Arden) is one of my favorite characters, also the Nazi correspondent Emil Von Hofer (Sig Ruman) is an easy target of ridicule.

This one was a total surprise. Just a real fun time watchin this one. It almost felt like watchin "Airplane" with all the stereotyped Russian/Communist segments in this film.Clark Gable is a gem in this one (as he is in most of his films). Hedy Lamarr is the same as a staunch Commie streetcar driver. I can't tell you how many commie stereotyped bits in this film their are but they're almost all funny. I mean ridiculousness abound. After the first few minutes you know not to take this film seriously.It goes to show that Hollywood and the U.S. were anti-communist way before the HUAC hearings. Just watch this one and laugh. I know I did.

CLARK GABLE and HEDY LAMARR share the screen in a romantic comedy along the lines of "Ninotchka", which made such a success for Greta Garbo. Obviously, Louis B. Mayer hoped COMRADE X would do for Hedy what the other film did for Garbo's image--and to some extent, it did.It's not as sophisticated and witty as the Garbo film, but Hedy plays a dedicated Soviet woman who thinks that an American that she is attracted to (CLARK GABLE) shares the same philosophy. FELIX BRESSART is her scatterbrained father, EVE ARDEN is an American newspaper woman and SIG RUMAN is a loyal Nazi foreign correspondent in Russia who is just as confused as everyone else as to the identity of "Comrade X".It's a good role for Hedy, playing her role very much the way Cyd Charisse played the Russian gal in "Silk Stockings", and with a comic flair that she seldom exhibited in any of her MGM films, even the so-called comedies. Gable is more or less himself as the cynical newspaper man who ends up taking his bride (Lamarr) to America after they've had a few escapades that have the Soviet authorities chasing them all over the hillsides in tanks--the film's most amusing moments.One of the funniest performances comes from NATASHA LYTESS, as Olga, a secretary who tells Gable she's a spy. Her drunken antics are a highlight (she can't see a thing without her glasses). Lytess was Marilyn Monroe's acting coach for several years, the superstar being dependent on her for her every move during her early films at Fox.

The film fascinates because it was made in 1940, just when WWII was getting started. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had just divided Poland between them and neither Nazis nor Communists much admired by most Americans. Our hero, played by Clark Gable, is forced by the Soviets to share his hotel room with a Nazi journalist. The Nazi is a caricature, as are the Soviets, who are shown ordering assassinations a¿of anyone they dislike. At one point the Gable character creates a diversion by shouting out that Germany has just invaded Russia. He is, of course, shouting a year too soon, but the reaction is interesting. The plot itself is foolish, but the glimpse into the past, with references to the Brooklyn Dodgers murdering the Reds (of Cincinatti) makes the movie great fun.