I love Garbo and think she was one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, but that hat that she sees in the window and ends up wearing to Melvyn Douglas' is the ugliest hat I ever saw! Anyone else think so?
shareI agree... UGLY hat!
I don't patronize bunny rabbits!!
I agree with the original poster AND Ninotchka : "How can a civilisation
survive which permits their women to put things like that on their heads?"
rueful head shake,"It won;t be long now, comrades."
And I loved that moment later when Ninotchka puts the silly hat on
and looks disbelievingly at her own reflection in the mirror, both
pleased and ashamed. I hear Garbo was a snooty, vain pest to be
around, but she was an amazing actress.
She was not snotty but reserved and was very depressed and was not vain.
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"Ugliest" is much too kind a word... ;)
Yeah, I was sat there thinking 'what's with the Smurf hat?!'
shareWell, I got that it was intentionally supposed to be ugly, kind of a comment on the silly hat craze that was all the rage in Paris and other big cities back in those days.
As someone else called it, a "nuclear reactor" hat, meaning that its shape resembled one of those cooling towers so often seen with many modern nuclear power plants. I guess it also might resemble something one might use to sheath a horse's penis.
Whatever, it was one damn stupid looking hat, but Ninotchka's point was well taken: "How can a civilisation survive which permits their women to put things like that on their heads?" Rueful head shake, "It won't be long now, comrades."
Iunno why, and I suspect that it may just be me, but for a lot of this movie I thought Garbo looked well...plain. I didn't quite believe it myself - perhaps it had something to do with her playing a dour Russian. Oh well, the move was great and Douglas was grand (I had just seen him in a wonderful turn as the father in Hud).
shareShe was supposed to look plain. In fact - & this is found in the trivia section - she didn't even wear make-up during the beginning scenes. It is a testament to her awesome beauty that she still looked fine on screen w/out it, even if she did look better later when she was wearing it.
Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
I love the ugly hat. I also think it is quite practical and the bolsheviks should love it and not think it is a signal of the end of civilization. It is wool, hugs the head nicely for warmth and has that chimney at the top to let off any excess heat. Come to think of it, with civilization coming to an end, I want one.
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Let's not forget that this is a 1939 film. There were no smurfs then, nobody except a few physicists had ever heard the word nuclear, we didn't know Stalin would end up killing more innocents than Hitler, the heil hitler in the train station was funny then, it hadn't been proven that communism was a total failure, etc, etc, etc.
You really can't say the hat was ugly or her hairstyle was bad ... I mean this probably took place before your parents were born!
The above was just a statement of facts - my personal opinion is that this took place in another time, in what was almost another, and perhaps, better, world (WWII was just starting at that time, maybe it hadn't even started at the time filming was taking place?) A time and place I'm sorry I can't get to see.
So yeah, it looks funny to us now, but in today's world she would have returned to Moscow pregnant, with an STD and a couple tattoos. I think I prefer the hat.
The hat was very ugly. When I first saw it on screen I thought WTF?
shareugly is a strong word
silly is more accurate
I love Garbo as well, but that hat was ridiculous! It was made worse by the fact that they kept calling it beautiful, etc.
Maturity. The very staple of the IMDb message boards.
I was put off by it at first, but got used to it, and then liked it -- it was bold and different. I think I once saw Myrna Loy in a similar hat in a movie.
shareI recall Jeanette MacDonald wearing a vaguely similar black velvet "funnel" hat in the colour film, "Sweethearts". It had bits of fur that matched the tone of her hair. As a kid, I imagined her hair was actually in the hat, hence the fur bits. XD
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It's me....Bara...it's always bloody Bara!