Greta Garbo and The Controversial Film that Ended Her Career

listen to any actor or director from Classic Hollywood talk about Greta Garbo and you'd swear they were talking about a ghost she was someone you might catch a glimpse of there one moment and gone the next and those lucky few who did interact with her were overwhelmed by her presence stunned into a pure state of awe Joan Crawford was left breathless after a simple introduction a conversationalist like dick Cavit managed only to anxiously sputter out a silly line about vegetable the examples go on and on the mysteriousness of Greta Garbo comes just as much from what she did on the screen as what she did off the woman once deemed the world's greatest most enigmatic star one day gave it all up never to act again no appearances at award shows interviews or screenings her deep commitment to her isolation became a new obsession in and of itself why did she leave why didn't she want to come back in this video I want to explore the beginning of the end of her career nka the film that rebranded Garbo for a late 1930s audience and the controversial followup that failed to capitalize on her recent success two-faced woman how did these films build on her Persona and how did they contribute to her eventual decision to retire from acting before we get started I want to give a huge thanks to movie for sponsoring this video movie is a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great Cinema from around the globe and you can get a whole month free at movie.com beind rewind to understand the end of Greta Garbo's career we have to understand the beginning in 1925 Greta Garbo formerly known as Greta Gustafson ventured to the United States from Stockholm Sweden where she had recently completed her first two leading film roles in The Saga of gasta Burling and joyless Street MGM was impressed with her screen tests and wanted to officially test the young actress with American audiences first came torrent in 1926 then the temptress both of which were successful enough to encourage the studio to believe in her potential but it was flesh and the devil in 1926 that finally confirmed that they had a major star on their hands paired with John Gilbert Garbo demonstrated a simmering eroticism and sincere tenderness that Bewitched the country in a context s acting typically relied on exaggeration to evoke emotion Garbo brought a Stillness and subtlety to the screen that essentially redefined the function of a closeup people have written very elegantly about Garbo's effect on screen Kenneth tinan comes to mind he wrote in Sight and Sound in 1954 what when drunk one sees in other women one sees in Garbo sober to watch her is to achieve direct cleansed perception of something which like a flower or a fold of silk is wrapped Le un assertively and beautifully Itself transed by the Ecstasy of existing she gives to each onlooker what he needs I'll put it more bluntly sometimes you truly just see a shot of Greta Garbo especially in her early silent films and you're just like oh my God I wish I could be as eloquent as tinan but there is something actually inexplicable about watching her that even Billy Wilder could not articulate the face that face what is it about that face he said you could have read into it all the secrets of a woman's Soul mgm's head of production Irving thalberg knew that whatever it was Garbo had was now the Studio's greatest asset and set to work on developing her Persona as Mark Vieira describes in his book Greta Garbo a cinematic Legacy he soon landed on a reliable formula for her films in every film henceforth Garbo would be an ageless mysterious Beauty encountered in a picturesque setting by an idealistic young man who soon discovers that she is married to or being kept by an older man she wasn't a vamp nor was she an anenu she was a kind of deity remote and Untouchable but altogether alluring and pristine she had a European appeal that to most Americans felt exotic and sophisticated her characters traveled to the farthest corners of the earth wearing elegant gowns and became involved in love affairs with the highest stakes and audiences loved every minute of it Robert dance writes in his book The Savvy Sphinx how Garbo conquered Hollywood Garbo's supercharged eroticism was perfectly suited to the social climate of the mid 1920s adultery and divorce were catnip to post World War I audiences it's hard to oversell how famous Garbo became she was the the ultimate star a woman who blurred myth and reality unmatched on screen and practically a Hermit in real life fans would always crave more but she would tantalizingly leave them wanting her 1930 film an a Christie introduced a new element of her skill her voice seeing the tagline Garbo talks on billboards around the country audiences flocked to see their favorite star speak for the first time the 1930s then allowed her to take out even more New Dimensions she became famous for the oft parody line I want to be alone she transgressed gender Norms in Queen Christina she broke hearts in Camille and Anna carena still mgm's commitment to the formula remained steadfast Garbo it seems had made an art of suffering beautifully Molly hll writes suffering when it is so exquisitely felt and expressed is no longer suffering but an art a symbol of suffering the man she loves is of less importance than love itself and it is no accident that her Leading Men were either weak to begin with OR became invisible for as a figure who combined elements of both sexes and the ends and the essence of Love itself she usurped the whole screen she did usurp the whole screen and boy did she suffer I made this handy little chart which shows us how often her character dies how often her love interest dies and how often she ends up depressingly alone I didn't get to rewatch all of her films for this video so take this with a minor grain of salt but I'm pretty sure this is right and wow it's a lot she dies much more than your average Leading Lady and even if no one dies that doesn't guarantee anyone a good time take as you desire me from 1932 nothing on the chart here but she does play an alcoholic bar dancer suffering from Amnesia caused by an injury during World War I so the point is when you have a formula for something after a while it can start to feel repetitive I really like most of Greta Garbo's movies and yet I have to be honest many of them blur together precisely for this reason you can only get away with doing that for so long on May 3rd 1938 a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter taken out by the independent theater Owners Association begged producers to wake up the Stars whose films had made made a ton of money earlier in the decade simply weren't cutting it anymore if the studios themselves weren't going to acknowledge that certain actors popularity was declining then these exhibitors were going to do it for them and publicly among the names listed as box office poison were some of the brightest stars of the early 1930s Marina Dietrich May West Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo it's likely that MGM would have seen a declaration like this coming the box office numbers proved that her her hold over audiences was waning her latest film 1937's Conquest yet another forbidden romance in a historical setting with extremely high stakes was the only real money losing film of Garbo's career this presented MGM with a conundrum they didn't want to cut her loose she was still very valuable but they had to reckon with how she fit in a modern context tastes evolve things get old after a decade surely audiences who lived through the Great Depression and were monitoring the rise of fascism in Europe in real time were searching for something different than the audiences of the Roaring 20s even she was bored with her Persona by that point I'm tired of period pictures and I want to do something modern now she told a reporter don't you think it's high time they let me end a picture happily with a kiss I do there's also an economic reality to face as Vieira points out the studio understood that if war broke out in Europe MGM would would be unable to exhibit films there which meant losing 2/3 of Garbo's audience all of this is to say Garbo needed something fresh to revitalize her deflating popularity something that would particularly appeal to Americans sulk of yourell Garbo's Confidant co-star and mgm's Resident Garbo Whisperer writes in her Memoir the kindness of strangers that it was around this time that producer godfried Reinhardt instructed her to find an idea for Garbo's next film his advice keep away from historical topics and convince Garbo to do a comedy for once vertell went the other direction and became interested in adapting the then recently released biography of French scientist Marie cury that idea spent a lot of time in development but was eventually shelved altogether in her Memoir verel sites notes from a meeting at MGM in which a producer allegedly said well guys last night after dinner I talked to my my wife about the story and she agreed with me no pretty girl would ever study chemistry or physics of course Madame cury would later be played by Greer Garson for MGM anyway in the midst of the Cy situation vertell ran into her good friend writer melor lenel whose story love is not so simple seemed like the comedy MGM was looking for they convinced MGM to purchase the rights and more importantly Garbo to Star and thus nka was born nka follows a delegation of Soviet Russian bureaucrats who are sent to Paris tasked with selling jewelry that had belonged to the aristocracy before the Russian Revolution they need that money to buy food and Machinery the only problem is an exiled Russian Duchess living in Paris claims that those Jewels belong to her actually and not the Soviet state so she sues the delegation to get them back Leon who is essentially the duchess's living boy toy represents her in the negotiations one night he and nka meet and fall in love not knowing that they're on opposite sides of the case what they do know is that they find each other extremely Charming nka is robotic and humorless concerned mostly with facts and figures with avoiding excess and adhering to Soviet principles Leon on the other hand is a flirty Playboy who prefers Creature Comforts and indulging in glasses of champagne Opposites Attract chaos ensues and slowly but surely she sheds her severe Soviet Persona and learns to love not only Leon but the freedom and choice capitalistic Paris ostensibly provides new hats glittering dresses dancing parties if you're interested in the politics of this film I recommend reading Rick McCormack's book sex politics and comedy the transnational Cinema of Ern lubit which best articulates what I've always found really interesting about nka that as much as it might sound like a simplistic communism bad condemnation of the Soviet Union which was much deserved at this time given that Stalin had just orchestrated a famine that killed millions and regularly murdered his political opposition it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of capitalism either rather it should be read in its proper context and considered alongside the Democratic socialism of President Roosevelt anyway this Garbo would not die she wouldn't tragically lose her leading man in the last frame just as Anna Christi announced a groundbreaking era for the star with Garbo talks MGM smartly determined that nka merited another similar slogan to Signal her next shift Garbo laughs the tagline was used everywhere alerting movie goers to the new fun modern version of their favorite star the marketing wasn't the only thing MGM got right about in nka they assembled the perfect comedy team to Usher the project to life Garbo had wanted to work with director Ern luish for years and because he just signed a two- picture deal with the studio MGM quickly assigned him to the film by this point lubit had the rare distinction of being a kind of celebrity director not an anonymous Cog in a studio machine but an aour whose style was so easily recognizable from film to film that it earned its own nickname The lubit Touch characterized by subtle wit double on tandas and elegant dialogue he was called The Wizard of high comedy master of inuendo arch priest of that form of humor that tickles the Discerning pallet like a peccant sauce he had just started working with a young writing Duo who joined him for the screenplay Billy Wilder and Charles bracket several versions of the story existed before they were assigned to T nka but the three of them Wilder bracket and luit were given ample time to Workshop the script and carve it into something Sublime The Odd Couple relationship is believable evolving naturally from harmless flirtation to desire to genuine affection Melvin Douglas ay supports Garbo without taking up too much space the screenplay doesn't throw Garbo into the deep end of comedic performance it understands her strengths and wields the audience's perceptions of her to its Advantage the somber serious Garbo of romantic dramas becomes Inc comedy dead pan and severe to the point of absurdity you see a perisian only goes to the tower in moment of Despair to jump off how long does it take a man to land at times it nods to Garbo's Persona quite literally with references like waiting on train platforms or wanting to be alone we want to be alone ultimately the film becomes a meta commentary on Garbo herself nka the character opens up before our eyes revealing her previously unseen warmth and charm in the same way nka the film opens up Garbo exploring new hidden depths unlocking new reasons for audiences to love her if Garbo's usual purpose was to suffer glamorously in nka she acknowledges that suffering and finally allows us to witness her overcoming it and how thoroughly she commits her harsh Resolute delivery of Soviet Dogma her dizzy chuckling at new love the way she warmly but mournfully reminisces with friends audiences and critics adored it it wasn't just that Garbo laughed it was that she sang and danced she drinks champagne and goes all giddy she kids herself she buys frivolous hats it was the tone and tempo of the story enlivened by Whimsical lubish touches suddenly Garbo felt fresh and new like a human being and she got some of the best reviews of her career it must be monotonous this superb rightness of Garbo's playing wrote Frank nett in the New York Times we almost wish she would handle a scene badly once in a while just to provide us with an opportunity to show we are not a member of a fan club but she remains infallible and Garbo always exactly with the situation demands always as fine as her script and director permit her to be nka earned $1.1 million at the box office domestically and another million overseas even without Europe Garbo earned her final best actress nomination although well she was never going to win that one obviously people wanted more of this Garbo as gossip columnist Luella Parsons put it the Laughing Garbo is 10 times more popular with the fans than the somber lady she used to be turning to Comedy in Inka Garbo won the admiration and allegiance of many movie patrons who prior to that film had dismissed her pictures with the excuse that they're too heavy and tragic for me another paper said MGM was only too happy to oblige audiences clamoring for more laughs and immediately rushed to reunite her with luit though that never quite worked out it would be 2 years before they found a suitable followup a follow-up seemingly cursed from the beginning as sua forell explained what they had all would have liked best was a sequel to nka resigned I gave up arguing and half-heartedly suggested a comedy by ludvig fala the twin sister yes based on the 1901 play that was then turned into a 1925 silent film called her sister from Paris two-faced woman would take the new Garbo as comedian brand a step further Melvin Douglas returns as her love interest here playing a magazine editor who meets a ski instructor kin and marries her basically the next day unsurprisingly the two of them realize that they don't actually know each other very well she wants to stay in the mountains and ski he wants to return to New York City to work he storms off and fearful that he might reunite with his former lover she follows him to the city again chaos ensues Karin is spotted and rather than admit that she's spying on her husband she invents a fake twin sister Catherine and pretends to be her for the duration of the trip Catherine is everything Karen isn't she dances she parties and most importantly she intervenes in Karin's marriage by thwarting his reunion with his ex and testing how faithful he really is MGM placed so much faith in Garbo's second turn as a relatable comedian that they apparently didn't think two-faced woman required the careful curation of behindth camera talent that nka so obviously benefited from they recklessly slashed the film's budget and refused director George cuor sufficient time to work with the writers on the screenplay the insufficient planning inevitably affected the production ccor had to improvise the blocking of complex scenes the script changed day-to-day which isn't totally abnormal but it was abs absolutely never done on Garbo's films because it put her ill at ease scenes that had major implications for the plot were cut at the last minute and Garbo even had to come back for two weeks of re- shoots it was kind of a mess and things would only get worse upon completion of the film MGM submitted it to the production code Administration who determined that it contained no immoral or illicit material and was suitable for release wonderful MGM assumed everything was fine released it as usual and then controversy erupted who else but the Legion of decency a Catholic group dedicated to policing film for objectionable content came out of nowhere and condemned a two-face woman for its immoral and unchristian attitude toward marriage and its obligations imprudently suggestive scenes dialogue and situations and suggestive costumes recurring villain on the channel Archbishop Francis Spelman also reared his bulis head and announced the film to his New York congregation as an occasion of sin urging Catholics across the country to skip it the film was promptly banned in various cities across the country and Congress even got involved in a letter to will Hayes head of the production code Administration Congressman Martin J Kennedy demanded that the distribution of the film be halted and wrote I cannot understand how your reviewers could have approached this viral picture so lacking indecent content the production of this picture must be considered as an affront to the Congress of the United States this is absolutely an insane thing to say in general but it's particularly insane if you've seen the movie and know how deeply tame it actually is then again it's hard to judge accurately because 99.9% of people alive today have never actually seen the version the Catholic Calvary decried Soviet vly in a scramble to accommodate the protesters MGM reassured the public of its commitment to following the production code and invited Archbishop Spelman to meet privately with Louis B Mayer and suggest edits that would make the film more quote unquote acceptable based on his feedback Douglas was called in to shoot a brief scene that clarifies that his character knows from the beginning that kin is pretending to be Catherine so there's never actually any real threat to their marriage and he's just playing along with her game the whole time the original version was withdrawn from circulation and the revised cut was sent to theaters as a replacement while the original still exists the revised version has only ever been available for streaming or purchase for all the furer two-faced women inspired I think the real crime is that this film is just not very good and I'm far from the only person who feels that way in fact the New Yorker review of the film in 1941 quipped in reference to the controversy one can only feel that the Archbishop who opposed the showing of the film was Garbo's one true friend ouch that maybe feels a little out of line but two-faced women really and truly does make inexplicable narrative choices that in my mind completely warrant a sassy response the first 5 minutes represent everything wrong with the movie the couple meets we learn nothing about either of them they disappear on a ski trip reappear and wouldn't you know it they just got married it's as if they said hey you know it would be fun a romcom in which you miss the entire process of two people falling in love we don't know them or why on Earth they like each other so when they start fighting about their differences you sort of feel like well yeah you don't seem like a great match maybe a divorce is fine actually not boy am I excited to see the crazy lengths these kids go to to stay together in spite of being completely different as studios are known to do MGM seemingly learned the wrong lesson from its own success to them nka simply gave a green light to consider Garbo for chedic roles this isn't necessarily wrong but fails to consider specifically why nka worked what Beyond Garbo in comedy needed to be replicated to guarantee success we already know that cuor and the screenwriters of two- faed women didn't have the time or money lubit and Co had for nka but were they even the right team for this vehicle was this story even suited to Garbo the screenplay of two-faced woman is attributed to George Oppenheimer who was best known for writing farsal material for the Marx Brothers as well as Sam Burman and sulker verel both of whom traditionally wrote romantic dramas they're the Anakin and a queen Christina team unsurprisingly Oppenheimer took the Reign on the humor and geared the screenplay toward physical comedy sometimes verging on slapstick contrast this with nka which deploys physical gags sparingly but relies largely on verbal wit something much more within Garbo's wheelhouse qor isn't the director for this kind of humor either he could absolutely direct comedies dinner at 8 the women but his expertise like luit lay in verbal sparring and strong character ization which this screenplay doesn't have two-faced woman tries to replicate some of the elements that made nka sing it attempts a similar Arc for example the disciplined serious career woman who is liberated by love however it tries to illustrate this transformation through what I consider one of the worst sequences in Greta Garbo's entire filmography when we first meet Karin she steadfastly proclaims that she doesn't dance later in the film however she has to dance out of necessity to legitimize Catherine as a distinct person from Karin so like in nka she breaks down her walls hits the Dance Floor improvises a jig and suddenly she's a veritable sensation Garbo gives it her all but it is just indescribably awkward to watch or as the Time Magazine critic put it almost as shocking as seeing your mother drunk it's not well choreographed it's basically walking in a circle and clapping this is one of those things qor improvised her dress is awful costume designer Adrien was given so few resources for Garbo on this film that he literally left MGM assuming they'd given up on Glamour and you don't believe for a minute that she's actually letting loose in a fulfilling life-changing way Greta Garbo is in an irine dun roll and at a certain point you start to feel bad for her many critics felt the same going out of their way not to blame Garbo for a film they considered one of the worst of her career that the experiment of converting Greta Garbo into a comedian is not entirely successful is no fault of hers wrote variety had the script writers and the director George ccor entered into the spirit of the thing with as much enthusiasm lack of self-consciousness and abandon as the star the result would have been a Smash Hit The New York Times was less kind however the film deci I ly condemns Itself by shoddy workmanship Miss Garbo's current attempt to trip the light fantastic is one of the awward exhibitions of the Season though she is her cool and Immaculate self in the role of the clean limed ski instructress she is as go and stilted as the script when playing the lady of profane love everyone involved knew unfortunately that the film was not very good cuor said later even while we were doing it it had a chill a portent of failure fortell wrote in her Memoir I thought Garo was miscast unlike nka in which lubich had humorously exploited her unique personality two-faced woman demanded a flippant comedian most significantly Garbo herself wasn't happy not that she was ever typically pleased with her own work but Garbo's comfort zone was small on a good day in a routine film this had pushed her too far two-faced woman turned out to be a much more fatal mistake than MGM had intended or anticipated by pushing her Persona to new extremes MGM had inadvertently shattered the illusion of Greta Garbo they made a deity seem human and not in a good way Celia AER wrote in the newspaper PM the wickedness in two-faced woman is not in its careless disregard for what are supposed to be public morals but in its vandalism in its story's Frenzy to cover up its own emptiness its sterility its lack of any fine feelings it makes Garbo a clown a buffoon a monkey on a stick Karen Swinson adds in her biography Greta Garbo a life apart that the effort to americanize her by making her light and down to earth had a negative effect the overzealousness of the Wizards at MGM erasing all traces of European decadence in Garbo was her undoing imag makers had intended to homogenize her uniqueness instead Metro unwittingly subtracted a dimension from her two-faced woman is often branded as a wholesale flop because it's bad but in reality it was a modest success it only lost a small sum at the box office which was partly the result of Garbo's salary during retakes and the additional work necessitated by the Legion of decency in other words the movie wasn't great but audiences weren't actually eager to abandon and Garbo they still showed up and yet she never made another film Greta Garbo didn't stop acting because of two-faced woman not exactly anyway two-faced woman was a symptom of larger forces at play and hinted at what might have been in store had she stayed at MGM first Garo wasn't happy with the censorship the film had faced throughout her career her films had proven to be largely immune from both censorship and the tight Financial controls otherwi wi imposed on the depression Eros Studio system two-faced woman proved that that would no longer be the case she wasn't Untouchable anymore second her relationship with louisi may had become increasingly complicated they'd always had a somewhat fraught relationship battling throughout the late 1920s over wages and publicity obligations but Garbo's early career at MGM had broadly been shephered by Irving thalberg whose taste skewed more toward literary adaptation and sophisticated dramas that suited Garbo really well after thalberg's death in 1937 mayor's taste increasingly determined mgm's output he preferred easily digestible Americana which two-faced woman indicated would be difficult for Garbo to adapt to in that sense Garbo's transformation into a comedian was not just a way of Reviving something stale but also a way to adhere to mayor's vision for the studio would staying mean becoming a full-time monkey on a stick until she'd lost all credibility whatsoever relatedly third times were changing take a look at the dates on all of the news surrounding two-faced women and you'll notice that some of this stuff literally happened like the day before Pearl Harbor the onset of World War II altered the country and the film industry for good it demanded new types of entertainment New Attitudes and new faces Mar's sentiment mental Americana would coincidentally be in Vogue Garbo's European mysteriousness would not and fourth Garbo made a two-faced woman at 36 years old she would not have been blind to the fact that mgm's most valued assets were literal children and that MGM was quickly signing a new generation of stars like Hedy Lamar and Lana Turner to represent a new decade the Clock Was ticking toward 40 which meant facing a new new casting reality regardless of whatever Fashions or Trends came and went by all accounts Garbo never intended to entirely leave the film industry in 1941 she and MGM mutually agreed to terminate her contract but she initially planned to continue working eventually it was common for her to take long breaks between films and she remained open to pitches for years but nothing ever seemed quite right others ideas weren't tempting enough and Studios didn't find the ideas she offered very marketable either although personally I would kill to see her play a genderbent version of St Francis of Ace come on MGM but the longer you keep audiences waiting the more pressure builds on a potential comeback the more fear takes hold Garbo was never an actress with a hunger to work nor did she Pine for the attention of stardom with overwhelming anxiety and no real incentive to return at a certain point it just became easier to call it quits she imposed upon herself after the last movie silence a silence she has never broken Robert chiel wrote she was a goddess who became technologically unemployed and rather than face life and a career as a merely mortal star of the new sort she chose to preserve her Mythic quality which of course in our notably noisy society means a form of isolation and so Garbo became that ghostly legendary figure you'd sometimes spot walking in Central Park her abrupt exit is often the focus of the story after all it's so dramatic and oddly definite but it's also important to recognize how long she actually worked by 1940 the Press had already started praising her for her longevity the mere length of her career is as remarkable as the legend said the New York Times 7 years is considered the normal Hollywood career Miss Garbo has lasted 15 almost all of her peers had either retired been forced out or had sunk to rolls Unbecoming of their former statuses pford gone B Gone Swanson down but not out Garbo alone had been able to stick around and she got to decide for herself when it was time to go this is just one aspect of Garbo's story and there are so many others I'd like to explore I'd love to talk about Queen Christina one day her relationship ship with Sala or dive back into those silent films if you want to see more like this please consider subscribing I put out videos about Classic Hollywood every month it's Oscar season again I'd wager if you're a fan of the channel you're looking forward to seeing what this year's ceremony has in store around this time of year a lot of people start thinking back about ceremony past the winners 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Channel: Be Kind Rewind

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Length: 36min 22sec (2182 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024