Director: King Vidor
As if there were any doubt that MGM was simply rehashing the formula of one of their biggest hits of the previous year, the promotional poster for Comrade X read, “The Funniest Love Comedy Since Ninotchka!”. Hedy Lamarr takes on the Greta Garbo role as the icy Russian beauty who loosens up in the arms of a man. As an actress, Lamarr was never on Garbo’s level, of course, which is part of the reason that the effort doesn’t have quite the same appeal, even if the impressive pairing of King Vidor and Ben Hecht does warrant serious interest. Clark Gable stars as an American reporter in Russia who has secretly been sending derogatory reports back home. His valet, played by Felix Bressart (giving a similar performance to the one he gave in Ninotchka), finds out that Gable is the sought-after “Comrade X” and blackmails him into smuggling his communist daughter out of the country. Much of the film’s humor is at the expense of the Russians, from the opening title card that describes the country as, “beards, bears, bombs, and borscht.” While the jokes are often juvenile and they make the American hero seem insufferably brash, there are a number of inspired gags, such as the Keystone-esque finale in which an obedient army of Russian tanks become lemmings. Lamarr is good in one memorable scene in which, after Gable complains that Communism will never spread in America because it isn’t sexy enough, she puts on a revealing nightgown and bemoans, “How am I going to spread propaganda in this?!”
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