Ninotchka (1939)
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
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What critics compared Ninotchka to
To find its ancient equivalents, you would consult Ernst Lubitsch’s comedies of the ’30s and ’40s (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be), made in Hollywood but set in Europe, and the ’40s and ’50s dramas directed by Max Ophuls, particularly La Ronde and Letter From an Unknown Woman.
Inspired by the work of the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig, and by the films of Ernst Lubitsch, especially To Be or Not to Be and Ninotchka (isn't that Melvyn Douglas' mustache Fiennes is wearing?)…
A cynic might suggest that Netflix should have taken a leaf out of the (very musty) “Ninotchka” playbook when that film’s posters informed the public that “Garbo laughs” to promote Greta Garbo’s transition to comedy in 1939.
Ernst Lubitsch and his writers made Communism funny in "Ninotchka," and writer-director Preston Sturges took on political corruption in "The Great McGinty" and poverty and incarceration in "Sullivan's Travels."
Even, for that matter, in "Ninotchka" it is the women who are driving the plot.
To say that this is Wilder and Diamond’s best screenplay would invite argument; after all, Diamond co-wrote Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot,” while Wilder also wrote or co-wrote “Ninotchka,” “Double Indemnity,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Lost Weekend,” “Stalag 17”... you get the idea.