The Writer's Poke

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...

The scene that stands out to me most is when Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) is dressed as a man and has secured the last room in the Inn. Antonio (John Gilbert), the Spanish ambassador, needs a room too. He's willing to share it with the "young man" he assumes Queen Christina to be. She tries to give him the room, but in the end, they do end up sharing it, and once she removes her hat and coat, he discovers she's all woman. It's funny how Garbo has eyelashes and make-up, breasts, and yet, she was able to fool everyone into thinking she was just a young man who couldn't yet grow a mustache... The canapé bed has curtains, and so we assume that she and Antonio spend three full days in bed together during the snowstorm. That's pretty racy, but the curtains always remain closed. Even when the innkeeper comes in to offer them both chocolate, Antonio's is the only voice we hear invisibly respond. So we let ourselves logically imagine that both are in bed toget...

Interesting to pair this one with a reading or viewing of 1984, which I've been studying and teaching to students at the time I watched this one.  It's frustrating watching Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) for the first 50 minutes of the film. She's so monotone, so lifeless, so robotic. This is all on purpose, of course, but as a viewer, it's not very much fun to watch.  Ninotchka is a special Soviet agent, sent to Paris to check on three Soviet agents sent there to sell the former jewels of a Russian duchess. She arrives, and the men are surprised that Razinin (Bela Lugosi) sent a "female comrade." She tells them not to see her womanhood, and she clearly tries to see herself simply as a "comrade," not as a woman.  Nevertheless, Leon (Melvyn Douglass) immediately becomes attracted to her. He's close with the duchess, but neither he nor the duchess believe in love. Later he suggests to the duchess that he always thought love was "too middle class....

Part of me wants to look through Garbo's catalog to see what roles she played. In the last few Garbo movies I've watched, she was a courtesan, an erotic dancer, and in this one, she's a prostitute. Did she ever play a scientist or a school teacher? Must she always play "indecent" and castoff women? When Anna's (Garbo) mother died, she was only 5, and her father, a sailor from a long line of sailors, decided that she should stay with relatives in Minnesota. They were good farm people, he said, and if we are to believe him, he thought she would be much better off living on the Minnesota farm than with him on the sea. He's a sailor and doesn't think much of his profession and the lifestyle of sailors. His one hope is her, that she will marry a farmer and escape the fate of being attached to a sailor. Now 20, Anna meets her father for the first time in 15 years. Her life on the farm wasn't everything her father imagined. She was forced to flee the farm...

  Ideally, I would only watch good movies. This is, well, it's not good. Not even close to being average. It might be worth watching for historical value. but even that's a tough call. The historical value is that this is Greta Garbo in her first talkie. But boy is this movie slow, awkward, and boring. The camera shots... the cameras must be trees. They're stuck and don't move. It's a talkie, but it still uses written cards on three occasions for transitions -- when probably no "transitions" are actually necessary. Just switch to the new shot, director. It's okay. I promise the audience can follow along, especially at the turtle's pace this movie is going. And, it doesn't help that the movie is based on a Eugene O'Neill play, so that all the scenes are talk-driven and stationary. I just watched Mata Hari (1931), and I wondered in my review of that film if Garbo was still finding the proper use of her voice in talkies. Probably so, because s...

In Camille (1934), which I just watched, Greta Garbo plays an older woman. A younger man falls in love with her, and she eventually falls in love with him, even though she should know better. Well, that's essentially what happens in Mata Hari, too. This time, instead of a courtesan, she's a German spy. Set in 1917, she's "stationed" in Paris, and in flies this younger Russian airman, Lt. Alexis (Ramon Navarro). Hari wears these elaborate outfits, and when Lt. Alexis sees her at the casino, he buys a ring from another woman who needs money to gamble, and then he gives the ring to Hari, a token of his affection. Originally, you can tell that Hari knows better than to get involved with this guy, but he's persistent, and she's weak. She could have flown to Amsterdam and got away before getting caught, but she refuses to leave Paris, and that leads to her downfall. Like I said, they fall in love, but there's no way for them to be together, and unfortunately...

Some reviews on Letterboxd are essentially: I love Garbo. That's fine, but your appreciation for an actor doesn't equate to a 5-star review. I like a lot of actors, and most of them have been in movies of varying quality. When posting a review, even if it's just a sentence, my view is: it would be helpful to focus on the quality of the movie and not simply give a rating to an actor's appearance in said movie. All that said, I would agree that Garbo is an icon. She takes on roles that most actresses couldn't, and I like that as an actress, she's usually the center of the film, and not a throw-away after thought. In this film, Garbo plays Marguerite -- a kept woman, a courtesan. A quick Google search explains that a courtesan is not a prostitute but is a woman who basically "sells her favors" to a rich man so that she can live in the manner of a rich person. Favors include sex. As long as she's content living that lifestyle, no problem, but she reco...