![]() ![]() But Stiller was instrumental in what happened next. Stiller tried to have his say on the Joyless Street, ever possessive of his prized discovery, but Pabst quickly put an end to the interference and the film is a distinctly Pabst production (though years later, a truncated version of Joyless Street, with almost everything except Garbo’s scenes omitted, made it an overt, if altered, showcase for Garbo and Garbo alone). Yet she also yields an innate pride, and when her Greta Rumfort becomes smitten with an American lodger, her timid smile and giddy flirtations are astonishingly magnetic, almost as if she is shocked by the prospect of joy, however fleeting, even existing. Garbo took on a decidedly unglamorous role as the daughter of a humble civil servant, and she aptly coveys the corresponding despair and desperation of her station. Pabst’s Joyless Street (1925, Die freudlose Gasse ), just his second film, co-starred Asta Nielsen and was set in a seedy post-war Vienna, where crime and corruption are rampant and poverty and starvation plague the populace. ![]() Nevertheless, Garbo found another opening thanks to Stiller’s connections and a fortuitous encounter with German director G. But that picture, The Odalisque from Smolna, to be shot in Constantinople, fell through when funds dissipated. As Robert Gottlieb notes, the movie itself is “so elaborate, so stuffed with characters and dramatic scenes, that although her role is central, it isn’t determining.” 1 Still, perhaps foreshadowing Garbo’s later behaviour in Hollywood, her character is described in the film as “headstrong” and “willful,” and the accompanying themes of romantic entanglement and social torment would persist throughout her career.īy this point christened with a new surname, largely believed to be the invention of Stiller, who had ardently taken the young actress under his domineering wing and told his assistant there was “something quite extraordinary about that girl,” adding, “I must discover what it is,” 2 Garbo again signed on for another feature spearheaded by her newfound Svengali. Though her character is the reason for celebration at one point and the subject of fascination and adoration, Garbo is a relatively minor player. Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf and co-starring Lars Hanson, this 1924 feature, Garbo’s proper screen debut, was a simple, sweet, and generally inauspicious introduction to someone who would soon captivate the world. Intent on the ultimate goal of a stage career, Garbo studied at the Royal Dramatic Training Academy, performing admirably until word of more substantial film opportunities came her way.įinnish director Mauritz Stiller was in search of a new actress and Garbo’s determination yielded an audience with the famed filmmaker, which, in turn, tendered a role in his latest offering, The Saga of Gösta Berling ( Gösta Berlings saga ). She also appeared as an extra in a few now-forgotten productions and was enlisted by director Erik Arthur Petschler for his short, 1922 comedy, Peter the Tramp ( Luffar-Petter ). ![]() A job of necessity, working for a large department store, afforded Garbo the opportunity to try her hand at modelling, figuring in catalogues and in short promotional films. ![]() Born to a poor Stockholm family, young Greta Garbo (then Greta Gustafsson) found amusement where she could, taking to the streets for impromptu performances in front of queuing crowds at neighbouring soup kitchens and forming an amateur theatre troupe when she was just a teenager. However artless this persona appeared, however, on screen or in the public sphere of relentless scrutiny and adulation, Garbo had been working toward such a stature since childhood. Such an insightful and yet essentially imprecise observation befit perfectly an actress who was herself something of an enigma. At once alluding to the intoxicating physical beauty of Greta Garbo, which was somehow both natural and beyond all reason, it also suggests the inscrutable presence of this legendary star, a manifestation that was profound and indefinite. “What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.” This often-quoted musing by Kenneth Tynan, published in the April 1954 issue of Sight and Sound, is famous for good reason. ![]()
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