GARBO

"Ninotchka", BTW. "Flesh & the Devil" & "Queen Christina" strong runners-up.

Camille's creaky but has her best perf.

thanks Pash! never even heard of "ninotchka" but the internet is about to give it to me

I guess I'll vote for Queen Christina but I haven't seen these in awhile. I went through a huge obsession with her some years back.

Actually I really liked her last film, too, even though some folks said it wasn't really her style I thought it was hilarious and charming.

I have never seen a single one of these, I'm going to hide under a rock now.

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I bought Mata Hari on VHS so that must have been my second favourite...

The thing about Garbo is...she conveys some message in her films that by law no actor or actress should be able to. It's something beyond her words, beyond acting itself. Some pure essence of something. It's magic, it defies logic.

is there anyone who actually watched all those movuies to judje it correctly?

Well, I do recall watching them all, or at least as much as was possible. I think there is one where the film got lost or something...in fact I'm sure of it.

I've seen "Ninotchka", "Camille", "Queen Christina", "The Mysterious Lady" and "Flesh and the Devil". There's a box set of some of her talkie films in HMV for not very much money at the moment, I'll pick it up, I think.

I'm interested in seeing as many of her films as I can, after grabbing the DVD of "Flesh and the Devil" a few weeks ago, she's got this amazing weird magical screen prescence like nobody else I've ever seen. She is absolutely awesome.

The missing film Bimble refers to is "The Divine Woman". I read up a bit about it, and the more you read, the more sad the story gets. From memory, it was lost in a film vault fire in the '60's. In the same vault was Tod Browning/Lon Chaney's "London After Midnight" and a bunch of Theda Bara movies. MGM used to exercise strict control over their prints, and would insist that they'd be returned after a theatrical run, so the likelyhood of a complete print existing anywhere is, well, there is no likelyhood of it at all, basically. Maybe someone could borrow john titor's time machine for a weekend, then we could all see it haha. Weirdly enough, one reel of the film showed up in the Russian film archive a few years ago, though, and the reel is included as an extra on the DVD of "The Mysterious Lady". It is mainly a romantic scene between Lars Hansen and Garbo. Seeing it is almost worse than it not existing at all - it is SO GOOD, and Garbo's acting is so alive and vibrant, oh man.

I read on some weird brooks-cult website that Garbo & Louise Brooks were supposed to have had some kind of fling in the '20's. I have no idea if this is true, or where the story came from, but holy fuck if so! I kind of hope it is true, it's hard to imagine 2 more iconic figures from old movies.

Anyway, if you haven't seen any Greta Garbo films, get some FFS! Whenever I see them on DVD, they're less than a fiver, which is daft really. "The Mysterious Lady" cost me 2.99 from Borders, eh...

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Guess I should start with Ninotchka then....

GABBO!

I've never heard the one about Louise Brooks & Garbo. I seriously doubt that's true. Not that I'm trying to deny anyone's possible sexual orientation.

Ninotchka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYIHWJYhCno

Ninotchka is such a great movie, and I don't think I understood Garbo's acting style until I saw it. but they're a perfect fit.

But I'm a liar, because it's Mata Hari that steals my heart:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjTe2rumJGQ

Grand Hotel was pretty damn good, too, you know. And no one even voted for it. Sad.

"Look, Smithers! Garbo is coming!"

She laughs and smiles and smirks through Anna Christie while the rest of the cast chokes on Eugene O'Neill's sea spray.

a bunch of her silents are on Filmstruck. I watched The Kiss, more smartly directed than some of her others. Love, her first pairing with John Gilbert, impressed me most. First of all, Gilbert is a sexy beast. Then I finally got the Gabro mystique. When she's able to suggest self-mocking irony while projecting ardor, she might be the subtlest and most intuitive actress to ever stand behind the camera (and she has a freakout scene when she thinks Vronsky is dead that's quite un-Garbo-esque and still harrowing to watch).

Just watched the three silent film pairings with John Gilbert, Flesh and the Devil, Love, and A Woman of Affairs. Have concluded that I prefer Garbo in the silents, where she's entrancing, beguiling, mysterious. I like imagining a different voice for her. And in silents you don't notice too much of, as one critic put it, her "perpetual headache" look.

All three are fine films. Flesh and the Devil and A Woman of Affairs feature a lot of creative and at times conspicuously flashy camerawork. Love (actually the second of the three) is "Anna Karenina" and for some reason has toned-down camera movement, it seemed to me.

Anna Christie surprisingly bowdlerized for a '30 precode O'Neill adap, but she does play an ex-cathouse girl. There's a raw power to her first talkie, if it's not as pretty/poetic as the best silents Clarence Brown made with her.

Don't miss the German-language version (also starring Garbo).

Mata Hari is more foolishness, but Ramon Novarro = rowr

https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/garbo-by-joan-crawford-rare-bbc-documentary-how-to-watch-1235144183/

“Garbo, by Joan Crawford” will air August 14 and August 15 on BBC Four in the U.K.

Here is the copy they mention available on YT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x82BugFjGXE