Greta Garbo - Legacy

Legacy

Garbo was an international superstar during the late silent era and the "Golden-Age" of Hollywood and is widely regarded as a cinematic legend. Almost immediately, with the sudden popularity of her first pictures, she became a screen icon. For most of her career she was the highest paid actor or actress at MGM, making her for many years its biggest "prestige" star. It has been said that at the peak of her popularity she had become a virtual cult figure.

During the silent period, Garbo developed an acting technique that is thought to have been ahead of its time, one that set her apart from other actors and actresses of the period. Noted film historian Jeffrey Vance said that Garbo communicated her characters' innermost feelings through her movement, gestures, and most importantly, her eyes. With the slightest movement of them, he argues, she subtlety conveyed complex attitudes and feelings toward other characters and the truth of the situation. This approach demonstrated a deep bond with the character, with actions seemingly made on the basis of internal motivation—now referred to as working "from the inside-out". Director Clarence Brown, who made seven of Garbo's pictures, once said. "You could see thought. If she had to look at one person with jealousy, and another with love, she didn't have to change her expression. You could see it in her eyes as she looked from one to the other."

Critics have argued that few of Garbo's twenty-four Hollywood films are artistically exceptional, and that many are simply bad. It has been said, however, that her commanding and magnetic performances usually overcome the weaknesses of plot and dialogue.

Because Garbo was suspicious and mistrustful of the media, and often at odds with MGM executives, she spurned Hollywood's publicity rules. Except at the start of her career, Garbo conducted few interviews (she gave only fourteen in her life), signed no autographs, attended few industry social functions, and turned down all but a few requests for public appearances. She was routinely referred to by the press as the "Swedish Sphinx". Her reticence and fear of strangers perpetuated the mystery and mystique that she projected both on screen and in real life. In spite of her strenuous efforts to avoid publicity, Garbo paradoxically became one of the twentieth-century's most publicized women in the world.

Garbo is the subject of several documentaries, including four made in the United States between 1990 and 2005:

• The Divine Garbo (1990), TNT, produced by Ellen M. Krass and Susan F. Walker, narrated by Glenn Close
• Greta Garbo: The Mysterious Lady (1998), Biography Channel, narrated by Peter Graves
• Greta Garbo: A Lone Star (2001), AMC
• Garbo (2005), TCM, directed by silent film expert Kevin Brownlow, narrated by Julie Christie

She has been praised in the media and by personalities in cinema and culture, including:

Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia: The Complete Guide to Film and the Film Industry): Of all the stars who have ever fired the imaginations of audiences, none has quite projected a magnetism and a mystique equal to Garbo's. "The Divine", the "dream princess of eternity", the "Sarah Bernhardt of films", are only a few of the superlatives writers used in describing her over the years.... She played heroines that were at once sensual and pure, superficial and profound, suffering and hopeful, world-weary and life-inspiring.

Bette Davis: Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera.

George Cukor She had a talent that few actresses or actors possess. In close-ups she gave the impression, the illusion of great movement. She would move her head just a little bit and the whole screen would come alive, like a strong breeze that made itself felt.