Greta Garbo Documentary
It's 100 years since Greta Lovisa Gustafson was born in the Southern Maternity Hospital in Stockholm. It has been 15 years since her death and more than 60 since she retired from acting, but no one seems any closer to unravelling the enigma of Greta Garbo. Just how did a plump shop assistant in a Stockholm department store become the brightest star in the MGM firmament? And what precisely did Garbo do with her time during that immense hiatus between her final film, Two-Faced Woman, in 1941, and her death in 1990?
The film-maker and historian Kevin Brownlow, whose new documentary Garbo (co-directed with Christopher Bird) was commissioned to mark the centenary, acknowledges that the life of the actress remains shrouded in mystery. He tells about his one near-encounter with his subject. He spotted Garbo, in a street in New York, laden with supermarket bags. At the time, he was desperate to speak to her for a series he was making about Hollywood. 'I tried hard to meet her, but when I saw her in the street, I turned to a pillar of salt.'
Brownlow has interviewed, and made films about, many Hollywood legends, but he states unequivocally that 'Garbo was the greatest film actress ever'. Ask him how be backs up such an assertion and he simply rattles off some of her best known titles: 'Camille, Queen Christina, Ninotchka'. Garbo, he continues, was one of those 'rare actresses who was able to become the person she was playing and experience the emotions that that person was having. It was incredibly painful, almost psychic and quite devastating for her.'
Her roles often verged on the camp and sometimes on the downright preposterous, but she brought such intensity to the screen that audiences seldom laughed. Take her first talkie, Anna Christie (1931), in which she plays a barfly. Early on, we see her lurch into a waterfront bar, sit herself down, and command the barman to give 'give me a viskey, ginger ale on the side. Don't be stingy.' 'Shall I put in in a pail?', the barman replies. The idea of the most glamorous actress of her era playing a floozy on skid row is absurd, but Garbo somehow makes us buy it.
The film-maker and historian Kevin Brownlow, whose new documentary Garbo (co-directed with Christopher Bird) was commissioned to mark the centenary, acknowledges that the life of the actress remains shrouded in mystery. He tells about his one near-encounter with his subject. He spotted Garbo, in a street in New York, laden with supermarket bags. At the time, he was desperate to speak to her for a series he was making about Hollywood. 'I tried hard to meet her, but when I saw her in the street, I turned to a pillar of salt.'
Brownlow has interviewed, and made films about, many Hollywood legends, but he states unequivocally that 'Garbo was the greatest film actress ever'. Ask him how be backs up such an assertion and he simply rattles off some of her best known titles: 'Camille, Queen Christina, Ninotchka'. Garbo, he continues, was one of those 'rare actresses who was able to become the person she was playing and experience the emotions that that person was having. It was incredibly painful, almost psychic and quite devastating for her.'
Her roles often verged on the camp and sometimes on the downright preposterous, but she brought such intensity to the screen that audiences seldom laughed. Take her first talkie, Anna Christie (1931), in which she plays a barfly. Early on, we see her lurch into a waterfront bar, sit herself down, and command the barman to give 'give me a viskey, ginger ale on the side. Don't be stingy.' 'Shall I put in in a pail?', the barman replies. The idea of the most glamorous actress of her era playing a floozy on skid row is absurd, but Garbo somehow makes us buy it.