Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille is kept by the wealthy and powerful Baron de ...
"Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the aftermath of the Russian revolution. A trio of Russian ...
"So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his doom. Assigned to intercept allied war messages, ...
Based on Vicki Baum's novel and produced by Irving Thalberg, this film is about the lavish Grand Hotel in Berlin, a place where "nothing ever happens." That statement proves to be false, however, as the story follows an intertwining cast of characters over the course of one tumultuous day. Greta Garbo is Grusinskaya, a ballerina whose jewels are ...
Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Garbo's final screen appearance, as the legendary ...
This second filmization of Leo Tolstoy's novel is widely regarded as the best version. Greta Garbo plays the title character, the sheltered wife of Czarist official Rathbone. Intending to dissuade Rathbone's brother (Reginald Owen) from a life of debauchery, Garbo is sidetracked by her own fascination with dashing military officer Fredric March. ...
If Queen Christina is not the best of Greta Garbo's films (as many Garbo fanatics insist), it is certainly the most luxuriously romantic of her talkie features. The star is cast as 17th-century Swedish queen Christina, who feels that she can best function in a male-dominated world by adopting men's clothes and attitudes (this cross-dressing ...
Known under a variety of titles, The Atonement of Gosta Berling is an excellent representation of the Swedish silent cinema. Long, complex, and elaborately produced, the film nonetheless never loses sight of the human elements which motivate the story. Lars Hanson stars as Berling, a defrocked priest whose rebellious attitude hides a greater sense ...
G. W. Pabst's The Joyless Street (Die freudlose Gasse) is an unvarnished study of post-World War I Vienna. Plagued with skyrocketing inflation, the Austrian metropolis becomes the domain of every scurrilous form of profiteering. The central character is a crooked butcher, whose negative influence dominates the lives of virtually everyone on a ...
Accompanied by one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Hollywood history, Greta Garbo made her "talking picture" debut in this carefully chosen vehicle, the second screen version of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 play about the Minnesota-raised Swedish girl who desperately attempts to keep her unsavory past from her long-lost father, Kris ...
A W. Somerset Maugham novel was the source for the fair-to-middling Greta Garbo vehicle The Painted Veil. In a situation comparable to the plotlines of most of her silent films, Garbo is lovelessly married to Herbert Marshall, but carries a flaming torch for George Brent. (Also harking back to Garbo's silent days is the fact that neither one of ...
Conquest was released in England as Marie Waleska, the name of the real-life historical personage portrayed by Greta Garbo. The film begins in 1807, when Marie, a Polish countess, is dispatched by her country to meet with Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (Charles Boyer). Marie has been encouraged to press for Polish independence by whatever means ...
It was once theorized by critic Andrew Sarris that this 1931 Greta Garbo vehicle was subtitled "Her Fall & Rise" rather than the expected "Rise & Fall," because Hollywood--and by extension, the public--could not tolerate a failure. Whatever the case, modern audiences will latch onto Susan Lennox not because of its cumbersome title but because of ...
MGM's paranoid fear of audience reaction to Greta Garbo's speaking voice must have been the only reason for this plodding courtroom melodrama to have been made as a silent. Released with a synchronized score and two important sound effects, The Kiss would prove to be Garbo's, and Metro's, final silent feature film. Happily, Belgian director ...
Based on a lugubrious novel by Ludwig Wolff, The Mysterious Lady is a romance/espionage tailored to the talents of Greta Garbo. The divine Miss G plays an alluring Russian spy, directly answerable to satanic-featured general Gustav von Seyffertitz. While she's accustomed to fomenting suicides and apoplexy amongst her male victims, Garbo cannot ...
Not every Greta Garbo film is an imperishable classic; this was seldom truer than in the case of her repetitious 1931 vehicle Inspiration. A modernized adaptation of Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, the film casts Garbo as Yvonne, a Parisian belle with "a history." When her past returns to haunt her, she decides to walk out on her sweetheart Andre ...
The Temptress was Greta Garbo's second American film, and while it may strike modern viewers as excessively melodramatic, Garbo is always worth watching. The star plays Elena, the wife of Monsieur Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) -- and the mistress of rich Parisian banker Monsieur Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott). When the banker's Argentine friend Robledo ...
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