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Camarade X

Original title: Comrade X
  • 1940
  • Approved
  • 1h 44m
IMDb RATING
6.6/10
1.9K
YOUR RATING
Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr in Camarade X (1940)
Screwball ComedyComedyRomance

An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.

  • Director
    • King Vidor
  • Writers
    • Ben Hecht
    • Charles Lederer
    • Walter Reisch
  • Stars
    • Clark Gable
    • Hedy Lamarr
    • Oscar Homolka
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.6/10
    1.9K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • King Vidor
    • Writers
      • Ben Hecht
      • Charles Lederer
      • Walter Reisch
    • Stars
      • Clark Gable
      • Hedy Lamarr
      • Oscar Homolka
    • 39User reviews
    • 9Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 1 nomination total

    Photos40

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    Top cast32

    Edit
    Clark Gable
    Clark Gable
    • McKinley B. Thompson
    Hedy Lamarr
    Hedy Lamarr
    • Theodore
    Oscar Homolka
    Oscar Homolka
    • Vasiliev
    Felix Bressart
    Felix Bressart
    • Vanya
    Eve Arden
    Eve Arden
    • Jane Wilson
    Sig Ruman
    Sig Ruman
    • Emil Von Hofer
    • (as Sig Rumann)
    Natasha Lytess
    • Olga
    Vladimir Sokoloff
    Vladimir Sokoloff
    • Michael Bastakoff
    Edgar Barrier
    Edgar Barrier
    • Rubick
    Georges Renavent
    Georges Renavent
    • Laszlo
    • (as George Renevant)
    Mikhail Rasumny
    Mikhail Rasumny
    • Russian Officer
    Ed Agresti
    • Press Correspondent
    • (uncredited)
    Alexander Asro
    • Russian Waiter
    • (uncredited)
    William Bailey
    William Bailey
    • Press Correspondent
    • (uncredited)
    Al Bain
    Al Bain
    • Marriage Bureau Customer
    • (uncredited)
    Lici Balla
    • Russian Woman
    • (uncredited)
    Leon Belasco
    Leon Belasco
    • Comrade Baronoff - Hotel Manager
    • (uncredited)
    John Bleifer
    John Bleifer
    • Russian Marriage License Clerk
    • (uncredited)
    • …
    • Director
      • King Vidor
    • Writers
      • Ben Hecht
      • Charles Lederer
      • Walter Reisch
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews39

    6.61.9K
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    Featured reviews

    9bkoganbing

    Purging as we go

    With the success MGM had with Ninotchka another lampooning of the Soviet Union seemed a natural. So the following year while the Hitler-Stalin pact was still active, MGM came up with Comrade X.

    Comrade X is a pseudonym for some journalist who is sending uncensored stories out about the real Soviet Union. It happens to be Clark Gable and the whole Soviet secret police apparatus is after him.

    But a valet at a hotel where the foreign correspondents stay played by Felix Bressart comes upon his secret. He offers a deal to Gable, he won't turn him in if Gable convinces Bressart's daughter Hedy Lamarr to leave the Soviet Union with him and come to America.

    Easier said than done because Lamarr is as committed a Communist as Greta Garbo was in Ninotchka. So like Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka, Gable's got his work cut out for him.

    Comrade X's humor is a little more broad than Ninotchka's was. It even got a few good knocks in on Nazi Germany with Sig Ruman playing a German correspondent. The humor about the Soviets concerns what a dangerous thing it was to rise in the ranks of the party. Remember this was also the time of Stalin purging all kinds of people out of the party. Something that didn't stop until Hitler broke the non-aggression pact in 1941.

    And Hedy Lamarr is sure no Garbo, but she acquits herself nicely in the role of the fuzzy headed idealist.

    Gable, Lamarr, and Bressart get caught up in the internal politics of the Soviet Union and have to flee the country. What happens to them is the balance of the film and it is hilarious.

    One of the best films done by both of the stars. Grand comedy.
    8Linent

    Funny movie

    Clark Gable was mostly known for his he-man; lady-killer roles but he did some excellent comedy and this movie is a little-known gem. There were some great lines, too. "Well, there's some good news and some bad news. Last week all the towels were stolen. But on the other hand the water wasn't running so nobody needed the towels. Everything balances." And "Communists have ideas, but they found out you can't run a government with everybody running around having ideas". That's actually pretty true, too! People in government with "ideas" are the bane of ANY country. Loved the scene at the cemetery where the funeral procession passes by a podium carrying a coffin on its shoulders and suddenly the "corpse" sticks his head & hand out of the coffin and takes a shot at a political enemy. Curiously, the movie predicts Germany declaring war on Russia. Which in fact happened shortly after the film came out.

    Funny movie - the "Kaputski Cemetery"? Excellent!!!!
    7MCL1150

    Tanks a lot!

    I came in on "Comrade X" during the climatic tank chase scene. I don't know about the film as a whole, but the tank scene was wonderfully done. If it were done today it wouldn't be all that impressive. You'd be like "Hmmm, nice computer work!" But in 1940 it had to be done with actual existing props. So what you have is a swarm of "real" tanks chasing Gable's tank. On command they all stop, spin about and race in the opposite direction. Excellent cartoon like direction and fantastic execution of that direction. If you're a fan of cartoon like sequences done as live action then this film, or at least the final sequences thereof, are for you. Someone just tell me how they did this back in '40! One of the finest examples I can think of a great bit of work stuck somewhere in an almost forgotten film.

    I did go back and research the special effects for this film. They were done by none other than A. Arnold Gillespie who won four Academy Awards out of thirteen nominations. Besides "Comrade X", he worked on such little films like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Ben-Hur". As for "Comrade X" a true case of an industry giant being handed what had to be a small assignment considering his considerable talents. The studio system works!
    gleywong

    Wait for the tanks

    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.
    6Doylenf

    Amusing comedy with overtones of "Ninotchka"...

    CLARK GABLE and HEDY LAMARR share the screen in a romantic comedy along the lines of "Ninotchka", which made such a success for Greta Garbo. Obviously, Louis B. Mayer hoped COMRADE X would do for Hedy what the other film did for Garbo's image--and to some extent, it did.

    It's not as sophisticated and witty as the Garbo film, but Hedy plays a dedicated Soviet woman who thinks that an American that she is attracted to (CLARK GABLE) shares the same philosophy. FELIX BRESSART is her scatterbrained father, EVE ARDEN is an American newspaper woman and SIG RUMAN is a loyal Nazi foreign correspondent in Russia who is just as confused as everyone else as to the identity of "Comrade X".

    It's a good role for Hedy, playing her role very much the way Cyd Charisse played the Russian gal in "Silk Stockings", and with a comic flair that she seldom exhibited in any of her MGM films, even the so-called comedies. Gable is more or less himself as the cynical newspaper man who ends up taking his bride (Lamarr) to America after they've had a few escapades that have the Soviet authorities chasing them all over the hillsides in tanks--the film's most amusing moments.

    One of the funniest performances comes from NATASHA LYTESS, as Olga, a secretary who tells Gable she's a spy. Her drunken antics are a highlight (she can't see a thing without her glasses). Lytess was Marilyn Monroe's acting coach for several years, the superstar being dependent on her for her every move during her early films at Fox.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      At the time this film was released in 1940, World War II had already begun in Europe, but the Soviet Union still had a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In the film, Mac is able to fool a character by pretending to hear news that Germany has broken the pact and launched an invasion of the USSR. That's exactly what happened the very next year when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in summer 1941.
    • Goofs
      The script makes reference to the Soviet law that a person could divorce his or her spouse simply by sending them a postcard announcing that the marriage was over. But in 1936, four years before this film was made, Stalin had repealed that law when he rewrote the Russian constitution and made divorces considerably harder to get.
    • Quotes

      Vanya: The communists have ideas. But they found out you can't run a government with everybody going around having ideas. So what is happening, the communists are being executed so that Communism should succeed.

    • Crazy credits
      "RUSSIA. The never never land of steppes, samovars and spies -- beards, bears, bombs and borscht - where almost anything can happen - and usually does. "
    • Connections
      Featured in The Miracle of Sound (1940)
    • Soundtracks
      Funiculi, Funicula
      (1880) (uncredited)

      Lyrics by Peppino Turco

      Music by Luigi Denza

      Sung a cappella with modified lyrics by Clark Gable

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    FAQ16

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 13, 1940 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Comrade X
    • Filming locations
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA(Studio)
    • Production company
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 44 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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