Comrade X (1940)

Too much of everything

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

. . . "beginning of the end" for the movie studio known as "M-G-M." At a time when Warner Bros. was heroically churning out Beacon of Democracy features such as CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY, rival film production company MGM was striving to please the "Third Reich's" beloved Fuhrer with such party line fare as COMRADE X, since Germany was such a financially important market for the money boys at the so-called "Billionaire's Studio." In the short term, MGM's anti-Allies screed compelled what was then called "The U.S. War Department" to seize editorial control of EVERY American movie production company, dictating the minutest aspects of war-time film scripts with reams of red tape rules and regulations. In the long term, of course, MGM was relegated into becoming the tiny corner of Warner Bros. that it is Today. COMRADE X, unlike the famed home movie of Der Fuhrer's Videographer Leni Riefenstahl (TRIUMPH OF THE WILL) did NOT win a top Oscar (via the sort of rigged elections for which MGM itself was notorious), but like TRIUMPH it is deviously entertaining because Satan knows that you can trap more souls with honey than vinegar. Despite MGM's ridicule, Russia sacrificed 100 times as much as the U.S. in terms of lives and other resources to destroy MGM's Nazi buddies, with the "Eastern Front" outweighing the effect of ten "D-Day" invasions.

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 La Marr starred in this awful mess.This is certainly no Ninotchka, even with its anti-Communist theme. The film is just awful.It would have been funnier had they managed to make more fun of the Nazis in it. I realize that the film came out in 1940 and since we weren't at war with the beasts as yet, the film board probably wanted to cool things down.The ending becomes a ridiculous tank chase and becomes very silly after a while.The Commies come and go and knock each other off as if it's nothing. Even though it was so true, it was done film wise in such a boring way. The idea that the poet philosopher was a true phony who went on to kill his supporters was not adequately explained.A year after "Gone With the Wind" and Clark Gable had a bomb with this film!

In the days when actresses had genuine accents that put a lilt in their speech, Hedy Lamarr, like Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, had refinement and intelligence, and could portray "foreigners" from any number of countries. Here, Hedy is supposed to be Russian, and with a light touch, too. She makes a charming foil to beefy Clark Gable, who plays his usual role as the macho-male with a wink in his eye covering a heart of gold. Their chemistry is not quite as magical as that in "It Happened One Night," with Claudette Colbert (who had the softer edge and mysterious sex appeal that truly complemented Gable's), or even his pairings with the brassy blonde with the Brooklyn accent, but there are a number of scenes in this farce that I have not seen equalled elsewhere: namely the escape scene in the Soviet tank. Before the age of graphic simulation, the prop men really had to come up with a phalanx of Soviet-style tanks -- unless they used miniatures, and to see them "chase" Gable, with Hedy at the wheel, is almost on a par with a Chaplin or Keaton routine. The miming of the Soviet tank army is also hilarious.