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Garbo Sucks!

Started by Keebleman, November 03, 2018, 03:16:49 AM

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Keebleman

I've just watched Grand Hotel which I believe, despite more than four decades as a movie buff, is the very first time I have watched a film starring Greta Garbo, one of the few whose name is a virtual synonym for movie-stardom (I did watch a bit of Ninotchka some years back).

And she is bloody awful!  Especially in her opening scenes: her delivery is abysmally stilted and her physical acting is that of someone who hasn't been told that silent movies ended five years before.  It's a style of acting that is impossible to take seriously on any level now.  She improves later on when her character becomes exuberant through love, but she is so bad in her opening scenes that I dreaded her appearing again. 

The movie is 86 years old, so you would expect it to be dated, but her co-stars - John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford - are all terrific.  This is not to say that their performances haven't dated - they have - but they are all still fun to watch on their own terms, even Crawford, who I've always disliked; here she is appealing, confident in handling changes of tone and very beautiful. 

chveik


notjosh

I think the performance is in keeping with the character of a highly-strung, over-emotional dancer. But I think the whole film is a bit melodramatic and stilted, the writing kind of trite. I actually prefer the remake, Week-end at the Waldorf for its comparative lightness of touch, even if the cinematography and production design is fairly flat and uninspiring.

You should give Ninotchka a full watch, it's a mannered but very sweet performance. Camille is also an excellent sound performance, and I'd recommend Flesh and the Devil from her silent work. She always strikes a very theatrical tone, but I like that, it's part of who she is and I think it's reflective of the fact that such characters exist in reality too.

Soup

Everyone is saying "Garbo this" and "Garbo that," but no one is saying "worship this" and "Jericho that."

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: notjosh on November 03, 2018, 10:42:17 AM
You should give Ninotchka a full watch, it's a mannered but very sweet performance.

I'd agree with that, it's the only Garbo film I've seen and it is a little claustrophobic as it's mostly filmed using a couple of sets, but the performances and script are strong.

Grand Hotel is just a bad film mate, you should watch Camille or Queen Christina instead

Sin Agog

Bogdanovich in conversation with Orson Welles about Garbo.

PB: It's just a shame she only made three good pictures.

OW: My boy, she only needed one.


Not sure what the three he was referring to were, but Ninotchka is a tight little Lubitsch film, and her otherwordly statue come to life quality kind of worked when it came to depicting a hardline Commie, and Queen Christina and its giant, cavernous sets and intense feeling of isolation are arguably more important than the actors involved.  Seem to recall being impressed with her emotive performance in that, though. 

When people talk about learning to adapt to the old style of acting, well there were different styles even within the '30s.  There was that naked, unscored, weirdly edited period in the very early talkie era that yielded a ton of great movies, but all have that strangely empty feeling (probably a result of modern composers leaning on their keyboards and stabbing their strings in lieue of letting us just discover the right emotion for ourselves). 

Anyway, I like her, but like Verdoux said Grand Hotel wasn't her best performance.  I remember Quentin Crisp talking about how liberating he found Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, these sharp, aloof adrogynes, when it came to his own sexual liberation

chveik

Yeah I agree with the recommendations for Queen Christina, Ninotchka and Camille.

Brundle-Fly

Was she the one that said, "I vont to be alone"?

NoSleep

The character she plays in Grand Hotel says it.

Keebleman

At the end of Grand Hotel, two young honeymooners run into the lobby to check in.  The bride is a very cute little blonde; she was uncredited of course, so I looked her up on IMDb.  Turns out her name was Mary Carlisle, she went on to a modest acting career in Hollywood which ended in the mid-40s and she didn't die until August this year aged 104!

notjosh

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on November 03, 2018, 04:59:55 PM
Was she the one that said, "I vont to be alone"?

Often when I'm alone I do impressions of her meeting Bela Lugosi.

"I vant to be alone..."
"I vant to suck your blaad!"

Hours of mirth.