Tovarich

Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer make a delightful team in this stylish thirties comedy. This film is creative and amusing in much the same manner as My Man Godfry. For anyone who enjoys black and white films this will be enjoyable. It has something about it of the grace and style of the old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films.

Delightful sophisticated `continental' comedy (kind of a `reverse' Ninotchka), so entertaining indeed, that when it ends you have the feeling that it moved along too swiftly, keeping you wanting at least 30 minutes more of film!

French born actors, Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert work together wonderfully well, under Anatole Litvak's very good direction, in this engaging comedy, based upon a french play adapted by Robert E. Sherwood himself, about two penniless members of the highest rank Russian nobility (escaped from the 1917 Russian Revolution) currently living in Paris, who masquerade as commoners in order to be hired as servants of an aristocratic household, full of sort-of-zany and bizarre characters.

Isabel Jeans and Melville Cooper are perfectly cast as the aristocratic couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dupont, who hire them, absolutely unaware of their new butler's and maid's pedigrees. Basil Rathbone, as always, gives an excellent performance as Comissar Gorotchenko, a very `special' guest at a lavish dinner party arranged by the Duponts, one of the funniest (and at the same time, most dramatic) sequences of the movie.

Boyer and Colbert are so utterly charming that one does not wonder why the Duponts and both, their daughter and son, are completely conquered and taken by the `undercover' Royal Russians, Prince Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff (Boyer) and Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna Romanov (Colbert), known by them as Michel & Tina.

This was the third and last pairing of its leading stars, who had previously worked together successfully at Paramount Pictures, in `The Man From Yesterday' (1932) and `Private Worlds' (1935).

(1937) Tovarich COMEDY

Adapted from the play by Jacques Deval produced and directed by Anatole Litvak that has Grand Duchess, Tatiana Petrovna Romanov (Claudette Colbert) and her Prince, Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff (Charles Boyer) attempt to elude capture from the Russian Revolution, to prevent returning a large sum of money intended for the Russian cause. They escape to Paris where they pose as butler and maid employed by the Dupont family of Fermonde (Isabel Jeans) and her husband Charles (Melville Cooper) and their two children, Helene (Anita Louise) and Georges (Maurice Murphy). It is not the matter of who's going to discover them but a question of when. The title "Tovarich" as the movie is called is the Russian word for "comrade" or "friend". Basil Rathbone also stars as the Soviet commissar, Dimitri Gorotchenko.

Sometimes it is hard to enjoy a movie considering what's going on, both during the Stalin era and the Putin era.

"Tovarich" is the story about two members of the Russian royalty who are married and living in exile in France following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Prince Mikail (Charles Boyer) and Grand Duchess Tatiana (Claudette Colbert) are living in poverty and they eat by Tatiana stealing food from the local market....but she doesn't just steal, she steals luxury items like champagne and caviar because, as she sees it, they are above laws that apply to commoners and they NEED caviar and champagne.

After years of living in squalor, Mikail decides that it's finally time for them to get jobs (you think?!?!?!). You learn all this in the first few minutes of the film...and I found myself thoroughly hating the couple. While I am no fan of the Revolution, rich pigs like this couple were the reason for such a revolution...and the film gives you no reason to look on them positively!

When they obtain jobs as domestics, the pair are happy and their employers, at first, have no idea their servants are members of royalty. But problems develop when Commissar Grotochenko (Basil Rathbone) comes for dinner, as he represents the new Russian government and he naturally hates royals. What's next? See the film.

I was very torn while watching this film. I love Boyer and Colbert, they are wonderful here as far as their acting goes. But the problem is the plot...and I mentioned that above. Caring about the communists or royals is a real chore for me....as both sides are very nasty pieces of work. And, it's odd that in the 1930s that apparently Americans were supposed to somehow care about royals...royals who in the 'good old days' killed serfs with complete impunity and watched them starve due to indifference. I normally never get political in my reviews...but it really is difficult to divorce yourself from history with a film like this.

Overall, this is a slick looking and well acted film about folks I just didn't care about at all. I do think my being an ex-history teacher made watching this much more difficult for me than the average person...most might not realize how truly awful and cruel the Russian royals actually were.

If anyone could see the scene of the Colbert and Boyer serving at a party and not laugh, I would like to meet him. This is a stylish comedy concerning two noble emigrees who are in possession of a Bank account worth 10 billion gold francs, and who sign on as butler and chambermaid to a Parisian couple and the adventures that ensue.