Conference bookie::movies

    
    If I remember correctly (and at this time of day, that's a longshot),
    Camille is sort of a nickname given to Marguerite based on her
    fondness for camellias.  They pop up here and there in the book --
    do they show up in the movie as well?
    
    Ron

    Yes! Camellias are shown a number of times, and Marguerite refers to
    her fondness for them, but I hadn't made the connection. No-one ever
    called her by a nickname as I remember, however.
    
    Thanks,
    George

    Thanks for starting this topic, Garbo is my favorite star of
    Hollywood's Golden Age.
    
    The Dumas novel on which the film "Camille" is based was turned into a
    play in the late 1800's.  Sarah Bernhardt used it as a vehicle
    throughout her career, and would revive it whenever she needed money
    (it was a sure-fire hit).  The French title of the novel and play is
    "La Dame aux Camelias" (The Lady of the Camelias). In a biography of
    Bernhardt, I think I remember that the title of the play was changed to
    "Camille" when she toured America with it in the repertoire.  She is
    reputed to have thought it both odd and funny, since the main
    character's name is Marguerite (which is actually French for daisy!).
    
    Back to Garbo...I have all her sound films on tape (some boxed, some
    taped from tv), and a few of her silents.  She made 27 feature films in
    all, 25 of them in Hollywood, 14 of which were sound (1929's "The Kiss"
    was the last silent film produced by MGM).  Most of her films are
    hackneyed melodrams where she gives up all for love (she made all her
    Hollywood films at MGM; the producers there knew they could kill her
    off in her films, without hurting the box office).  She seldom had
    great directors or co-stars, with the notable exceptions of Henry
    Danielle as the evil Baron in "Camille", Basil Rathbone as Karenin in
    1935's "Anna Karenina" (she had played the role in a modern-dress
    silent version with John Gilbert in 1927 titled "Love"), and Charles
    Boyer playing Napoleon to her Countess Walewsk in "Conquest" (1937). In
    her obituary, it was reported that she often directed herself,
    sometimes surrounding the set with a dark screen during an emotional
    scene, to prevent the crew from watching.  When she told Rouben
    Mamoulian to go out and have an ice cream soda while she did a scene,
    he told her "I am not accustomed to going out for ice cream while I'm
    directing a picture."
    
    Her best film is probably "Queen Christina" (1933) in which she plays
    the 17th century Swedish monarch who abdicated the throne (in the film,
    for love, in reality, for religious differences).  She was lucky to
    have a good director in Rouben Mamoulian; in one famous scene, he used
    a metronome to pace her as she memorized the room where she and her
    lover (John Gilbert, who had been her lover in real life several years
    earlier) spent three days while snowbound.  "In the future, I shall
    spend many hours in this room."  In the famous final shot, Mamoulian
    let the camera run for 85 feet in a close-up of her face, telling her to
    think of nothing; the audience supplies the emotions.
    
    She played the ballerina Grusinskaya in the 1932 Oscar-winner
    "Grand Hotel."  Only 26 at the time, she made believable the
    character's depression and fear of aging and failure.
    
    Another classic performance of hers is "Ninotchka" (1939) directed by
    another great, Ernst Lubitsch.  She made fun of her dour image,
    laughing uproariously for the first time on screen at Melvyn Douglas'
    pratfall in a restuarant, and playing a sublime drunk scene where she
    "atones" for her sins against the Russian people.
    
    One of the things that keeps "Camille" from sinking into bathos is the
    humor and irony she brings to the role.  Though she never won an
    Academy Award, she was nominated 4 times: in 1930 for her roles in
    "Anna Christie" (her first sound film) and "Romance" in which she plays
    an opera singer and even has an Italian accent; 1937's "Camille" (she
    lost to Luise Rainer for "The Good Earth" but was given the New York
    Film Critic best actress award; she had won that previously for "Anna
    Karenina"), and 1939's "Ninotchka" (losing, inevitably, to Vivien
    Leigh's Scarlett).  She was given a special Oscar in 1954 for her
    "luminous performances" (someone else picked it up for her).
    
    She retired from films in 1941, at age 36, after her last film
    "Two-Faced Woman" failed at the box office. In an attempt to recapture
    the success of "Ninotchka", it was a sex farce in which she played her
    own twin sister to test her husband Melvyn Douglas' fidelity.  The
    real reason it failed is that the Eurpoean market (where her films made
    the most money) was closed, due to WWII.  She never planned to quit,
    and as late as 1949 made screen tests for a film with James Mason, but
    the backing fell through.
    
    She is famous for deploring publicity, though she is quoted as saying
    "I never said I wanted to be alone, I said I want to be let alone." 
    She never married, though she came close to it with John Gilbert; she
    never showed up for the ceremony.
    
    After she died in 1990, her art and antique collection was auctioned at
    Sotheby's in New York.  I was one of the lucky few who bought one 
    of the paintings that adorned her New York apartment. 
    
    Richard
    

>    a metronome to pace her as she memorized the room...
    
    ... and stroked every phallic symbol available.  Great scene.
    
    So what does the painting look like?
    
    Ray

    Right, could that bedpost have been any bigger? ;-)
    
    
    re: the painting
    
    Garbo liked colorful, floral paintings, the one I got is a small
    one of an aster.  When I did some research on the artist, Fleur
    Cowles, I found out that she knew Garbo well enough to invite
    her to dinner.  Cary Grant was best man at Cowles' wedding, and
    Jimmy Stewart and the King of Greece (among others) own paintings
    by her.
    
    Richard

I've never cared much for Garbo's films. It's not Garbo herself, I just don't
care for the most part for the films she starred in. One notable exception
is _Ninotchka_, but then that's a Lubitsch film. She was perfect for the part
and might well have won an Oscar in any other year (the competition in 1939
was, to say the least, stiff). I didn't care much for Melvyn Douglas though,
Maurice Chevalier would have been perfect in his part.


Randy

Richard,
	Could you enter a filmography at some point? (or whatever one would 
call a complete listing of films. :^)) Thanks, George


Another review-

"Susan Lennox (her fall and rise)"   - 1931

Greta plays Helga who soon becomes Susan Lennox
Clark Gable plays her love interest

Plot summary- 
Helga is the illegitimate child of a woman who dies in childbirth. Much is 
made of her illegitimacy "My mother never had a ring." Her uncle wants to
kill her since she's illegitimate, but raises her anyway. He treats her
like a slave, and after a very nicely done 'passage of time' sequence using
profiled shadows of the growing Helga against a wall, we're in the present
time of the movie where her uncle is marrying her off (ignoring her wishes)
to a despicable neighbor. When the neighbor tries to rape her, with acting 
very reminiscient of her still recent silent films, Garbo runs away. 

She happens to turn into a house owned by a young engineer, Clark Gable 
sans moustache. A fortuitous circumstance, indeed! :^) 

Within the next 24 hours, he's proposed and she's accepted. Unfortunately, 
the day after, he goes to Detroit on business (and to get a wedding ring). 
Her uncle comes by Gable's house and Garbo runs away again catching a train 
to Detroit and away from Lennoxville. She hooks up with a carnival and 
changes her name to Susan Lennox. She is forced to sleep with the slimy
owner to avoid being turned back over to her uncle/neighbor. Gable finds
her at the carnival, and she starts to tell him about being forced to sleep
with the owner, but all Gable 'hears' is her infidelity and dumps her in a
fit of pique. 

The rest of the movie is the two of them hating, hurting yet still head
over heels with each other, and mostly her chasing him through a few
continents and various life circumstances. 

Gable hits the bottle and goes straight downhill. Garbo, how shall we say
it delicately, becomes a 'woman who relies on the kindness of men' to
frolic in the upper class NYC society of the 1930's. :^) 

The two of them had a lot of charisma on the screen, and it's fun to watch 
Gable in his first major role. Garbo is very good as usual, and she makes 
the most of the transition from a downtrodden slave of the patriarchy to
being fairly independent within the massive sexist constraints of 1930's
America. I find it interesting to compare it with the Selina Kyle
transition in Batman Returns that Michelle Pfeiffer portrays. Both start 
submissive and become self-confident. 

One moment absolutely stands out for me in what is otherwise an average
Garbo movie. Once again, it involves her stroking a pillar (:^)). 

She has just humiliated Gable in front of her current patron and Gable 
storms out. It becomes clear that her patron knows that the only reason 
why Garbo is with him is through her free choice, that he knows she still 
loves Gable, and he asks her what she plans on doing. Garbo portrays 
all of the mixed emotions she's feeling, (whether to follow Gable or stay 
with the patron, her love for Gable yet still wanting to hurt him over the 
way he dumped her, general indecision over whether to 'give it all up for
love') *mostly with her back to the camera and without a word of dialog*
just by the way she moves her hand along the post, half turning one way and
another and tensing her back muscles (visible due to her backless dress). 

A wonderful scene by a wonderful actress.

I enjoyed the film, but would put it half way down her sound films.

Cheers,
George

This doesn't *seem* complete, but it's what's in the USENET databases:

Atonement of Gosta Berling, The (1923)
Joyless Street (1925)
Temptress, The (1926)
Flesh and the Devil (1927)
Mysterious Lady, The (1928)
Kiss, The (1929)
Single Standard, The (1929)
Wild Orchids (1929)
Anna Christie (1930) (AAN)
Inspiration (1930)
Romance (1930) (AAN)
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931)
As You Desire Me (1932)
Grand Hotel (1932)
Mata Hari (1932)
Queen Christina (1933)
Painted Veil, The (1934)
Anna Karenina (1935)
Camille (1936) (AAN)
Conquest (1937)
Ninotchka (1939) (AAN)
Two-Faced Woman (1941)

    .8 did leave out a couple of her silent films.  Here's what Halliwell's
    Film Companion (and my memory) provide:
    
    Silent films:
    
    Peter the Tramp (1922)
    Atonement of Gosta Berling (aka Gosta Berling's Saga) (1924)
    Joyless Street (aka Street of Sorrow) (1925)
    The Torrent (1925)
    The Temptress (1926)
    Flesh and the Devil (1927)
    Love (1927)
    The Divine Woman (1928)
    The Mysterious Lady (1928)
    A Woman of Affairs (1928)
    Wild Orchids (1929)
    The Single Standard (1929)
    The Kiss (1929)
    
    Sound films:
    
    Anna Christie (1930)
    Romance (1930)
    Inspiration (1931)
    Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931)
    Mata Hari (1932)
    Grand Hotel (1932)
    As You Desire Me (1932)
    Queen Christina (1933)
    The Painted Veil (1934)
    Anna Karenina (1935)
    Camille (1937)
    Conquest (1937)
    Ninotchka (1939)
    Two-Faced Woman (1941)
    
    Her first films were actually advertisements for a Swedish dept. store
    she worked at, before she was accepted to the Royal Academy for
    Dramatic Arts (may not be the correct name of the school). The ad films
    showed her demonstrating how not to dress, and another showed her
    enjoying some pastries.  Her first film was in 1922 called
    "Peter the Tramp" in which she was one of three young women cavorting
    in bathing suits.  She was discovered at the Academy by Mauritz
    Stiller, reknowned Swedish director.  He gave her her first role
    ("Atonement of Gosta Berling") after changing her last name from
    Gustafson to Garbo).  He became her manager, and got her a role in G.W.
    Pabst's "The Joyless Street" (or "Street of Sorrow," in which she has
    her first role of an innocent who turns to prostitution to survive, and
    in which Marlene Dietrich had a small part). It was these two films
    which brought her to the attention of Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who signed
    both her and Stiller to contracts (Mayer told her to lose weight "In
    America they don't like fat women.")
    
    For some reason, Stiller wasn't allowed to direct her first American
    film "The Torrent" but he started directing her second "The 
    Temptress" but was replaced by Fred Niblo (most likely for
    taking too long and going over budget).  Her first two films
    were box-office successes, but it was her third film, in which she
    first co-starred with then-reigning matinee idol John Gilbert
    that put her on the map, so to speak.  It helped that their
    real-life romance was highly publicized, and their love
    scenes in the film are justly famous (Garbo was often given the dominant
    role in reclining love scenes).  He starred with again in Love,
    A Woman of Affairs.  In 1933, when Garbo was preparing for
    Queen Christina, she rejected the young Laurence Olivier in favor
    of John Gilbert, whose career had failed when his light voice
    (very similar to Ronald Colman's) did not match his screen
    lover persona.  
    
    When Garbo's contract expired in 1932, Mayer didn't want to
    pay her what she was worth, so she told him "I t'ink I go home
    now" and sailed to Sweden.  Mayer relented and she returned to
    Hollywood as one of the highest-paid stars, with director,
    script and co-star approval.  When, in 1941, the European
    market for her films failed due to WWII, she let Mayer
    off the hook, relinquishing her contract.
    
    Her acting range was greater in silent films; she played 
    an opera singer (The Torrent), a Russian spy (Mysterious Lady), 
    an actress (Divine Woman, a lost film, the role was loosely
    based on Sarah Bernhardt), a flapper (Single Standard), and
    an innocent American wife (Wild Orchids).  Once she started
    talking, she became relegated to the tragic roles for
    which she is best known.
    
    Clarence Brown was her favorite director, he made 7 films
    with her: Flesh and The Devil, A Woman of Affairs, Anna Christie,
    Romance, Inspiration, Anna Karenina, and Conquest.  George
    Cukor directed her twice (Camille and Two-Faced Woman).
    Her other directors included Victor Seastrom (The Divine
    Woman); Edmund Goulding (Love, Grand Hotel); Jacques Feyder (The Kiss),
    George Fitzmaurice (Mata Hari, As you Desire Me), and
    Richard Boleslawski (Painted Veil).
    
    Richard
    
    

You know, I was convinced it was Garbo in the 1937 English film directed by
Jaques Feyder, Knight without Armour. But it's actually Dietrich doing a Garbo
turn (Russian fur hats and the like.)

There was a spoof film magazine produced in Berlin for April Fool's Day 1936 or
thereabouts that had Garbo and Dietrich as Siamese twins on the cover. And there
was a rumour they had an affair, which would be plausible enough given how
self-absorbed and narcissistic they both seem to be on the screen.

My personal favourite Garbo film is Queen Christina. The film technique is
regressive (lots of out-of-date silent reaction shots and proscenium-arch style
staging), but Garbo obviously loves dragging up and being a dyke. The film could
be a metaphor for the control the studios (and the "moral majority", though the
expression wasn't used then) tried to exercise on women's sexuality.

And if Garbo really was exclusively lesbian, not getting married must have taken
a lot of courage and a struggle with the studio. Shame they got her in the
pictures.

Helen

    re: .10
    
    "Knight Without Armour" is a terrific film!  And Garbo certainly
    could have played that role, though Dietrich is fine in it.
    
    I have to take mild issue with the idea that the dirction
    of "Queen Christina" is regressive.  The director, Rouben Mamoulian,
    though he came from the stage, was a film innovator.  For
    a film he made the year before, "Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde", he
    experimented with the soundtrack for the transformation scenes (using
    the sound a heartbeat played backwards, for example), and for the
    transformation scenes themselves, he used makeup that was
    light-sensitive, so he could film the transformation without cutting,
    simply by using different camera filters.
    
    See my reply .3 in this string for some examples of Mamoulian's
    innovative techniques in "Queen Christina".
    
    It being made in 1933, there are certainly some uncomfortable moments
    where the players don't act with the same subtlety  as Garbo, but then,
    who did?
    
    
    Richard

re: -1.

I agree with you about Mamoulian in general. My personal favorite is Love Me
Tonight, which does everything imaginable with sound and music, integrated with
camerawork.

And I take your point about what is innovative in Queen Christina. But when
you've got Garbo and sound, why _ever_ do her in a misted closeup reaction shot
with a glycerine tear? 

I suppose the sensitive theme (sexuality and implicitly religion) plus Garbo
being still new in talkies meant that the audience needed something very
familiar to hang on to. And costume dramas are always susceptible to staginess
in this period. Korda's Rembrandt often looks like an ill-adapted stage play (eg
the paint-shop set) even though it isn't.

I also agree that Knight without Armour is a fantastic film. (Apart from Robert
Donat's hat, which always makes me smile.) I was interested to learn that Feyder
was Marcel Carne's great anxiety of influence figure (as they used to say at
Haarvahd). And Carne wanted Dietrich for Les Portes de Nuit, but Gabin wouldn't
play because Carne wasn't denazified enough.

I think we need a Mamoulian note, a Dietrich note and a Carne note.

Helen

    re: .12
    
    Thoughtful note, Helen and I agree with what you say.
    
    See you in the Dietrich note, which I'm about to start.
    
    Richard

Re: my .-2

I must admit that I've only watched Queen Christina on a tape made from
television. Unfortunately, the horse racing went on for longer than planned or
something, and I've never seen the famous final shot. Don Whiskerandos died at
the end of my version, then there was a bit of snow and The Terminator with
three of everything.

Helen

Richard, thanks for creating the Dietrich note.