Skip to main content

Garbo (2005)


Pretty nice retrospective of Garbo's life and career made 15 years after her death in 2005 by TCM. Kind of wish they had made it during her lifetime, because as is, the people alive that still knew her were pretty old, and many of the people interviewed are just the children or grandchildren of those who knew her.


The other thing: She retired at 36 and apparently completely disappeared from public life. So as the documentary notes, not much is known about her life after her career. She walked. She had a friend that she walked with and who acted as her confidant, but she lived in America, which means she was completely cutoff from any family. She never had children, and I guess never married. This is never explored. Did she completely give up dating, too, when she "retired." Did she stop going back to visit Sweden?

Although it would be easy to call her a hermit or a recluse, the idea presented in the documentary is that she simply liked being alone.

Her last film, 1941's "Two-Faced Woman." Not well-made and not well-received. She thought maybe she'd sit out the war and come back, but that never happened. She did some screen tests in 1949, and at the age of 44, she still looked good, like her younger self. But Hollywood had moved on, and her time had passed. I mean, if you think about it, a lot of women were forced into early retirement in Hollywood. Not all. Some transitioned into roles for older women, but maybe making that transition from "sex symbol" to older woman was as hard to make as it is to transition from silent films to talkies, or child actor to actor taking on non-child actor parts... The documentary's ending just describes it as the fickleness of Hollywood, but also the public always wanting the next big thing.

That's weird to me, because she was so in demand. Such a big star. She had incredible name recognition. Could Hollywood really not make any money with her even though she was in her mid-40s? Why not go back to Europe and make films there?

But then again, she didn't need the money, and she didn't have the drive or motivation to keep making movies. One of those interviewed said, "What a waste" that she didn't keep making films, and I agree. It's a "waste" for us, but if she was happy just walking and living a quiet private life, good for her.

Rating: 4/5
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X.  It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether.  And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it.  So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants.  The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Utero

  In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history.  She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process. 
Post a Comment
Read more