Ninotchka develops from cynicism into about as warm a Cold War film as ever there was. Ninotchka (Greta Garbo), the severe and dedicated Russian commissar, is sent to check up on the activities of three dubious emissaries feeling their oats in Paris. But romance threatens to melt the ice and foil the mission when the head of our bluenose Red is turned by the good looks of dashing capitalist Melvyn Douglas. The film “succinctly illuminates a central moral failing of communism, which was its denial of the human capacity for pleasure. . . . In confessing his love of the Soviet emissary, the Count admits his sentiments might be terribly ‘middle class,' a phrase that . . . might also describe both Lubitsch's ideal audience and his ideal civilization” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).