A Filmmaker's Guide to the Best Performances: Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo was a star of silent cinema and the later talkies, she would become a cultural icon of the old Hollywood days alongside actresses Mary Pickford, Louise Brooks, Ingrid Bergman and Clara Bow. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1895 and died in New York City in 1990 - she was 84 years' old.

She was the daughter of two labourers, one of which worked in a jam factory. She was a shy child who preferred to play alone and was always in some sort of daydream. At the age of 13, she had already been in theatre for some years and was participating at the Mosebacke Theatre. She didn't attend high school and left school at 13 and would later reference this as the beginning of her inferiority complex. Her father contracted the spreading Spanish Flu the next year and Greta left school to care for him - he died the following year when she was only 14 years' old.

She worked a series of odd jobs before becoming a fashion model for hats in a catalogue. A film director would cast Greta Garbo for modelling women's clothing in advertisements. She then caught the attention of another director who decided to put her in a short film.

In this article we're going to look at her very best performances and see why she is so well respected amongst the acting community and still has a cult following to this day...

So, here are my favourite Greta Garbo movies, if you haven't watched them already then I highly suggest that you do soon!

(These are in no particular order and will be in the form of a list and my personal favourites of all will be in bold...)

- Flesh and the Devil (1926)

A brilliant film that really challenged Garbo's acting talent and forced her to play an incredibly tormented character with a will power of greatness. The character is an amazing feature that adds to the drama of the film, without Garbo it wouldn't have been what it was. It is a melodrama about a count and his wife who is infuriated with a gran duel which goes down and puts another character into exile in Africa. Without revealing too many details, I can honestly say there was a great amount of tension in the film thanks to the grand rage of Greta Garbo's character.

- A Woman of Affairs (1928)

- The Kiss (1929)

- Anna Christie (1930)

- Romance (1930)

- Mata Hari (1931)

Greta Garbo was amazing as Mata Hari in this film because not only did she look like her, but she played the character with such a great amount of class. The character was a portrait of a woman and a spy, there is a grand balance of tension and rage that is instilled in this film. The way in which the plot develops is directly through the character portrayed by Greta Garbo. The legendary, Mata Hari.

- Grand Hotel (1932)

- Anna Karenina (1935)

My favourite adaptation of the novel. The book is one of my favourite books in the whole world and yet, the adaptation in 2012 didn't really do it justice. However, the 1935 adaptation of the book is something amazing as Greta Garbo portrays the amazing and yet beautifully tragic Anna Karenina. I feel like this adaptation though not completely true to the book - it at least tries to connect up the events through various bits of character development. I also feel like Garbo's performance was holding the film up, giving it the Academy Award Nominated nature it had.

- Camille (1936)

- Ninotchka (1939)

We can honestly see that Greta Garbo, in her few years in the industry, made a massive impact on the industry. Her roles were normally that of the enraged woman with everything to lose. She portrayed the tragic characters with a great amount of burden to carry. Characters such as Anna Karenina are very difficult to play and obviously, Garbo's drama school training would've helped with that a bit. Characters like Mata Hari, who existed in real life, would require Garbo to do research into the life of Mata Hari in order to portray the character with accuracy. I believe that Garbo is one of the great actresses of old and has been severely underrated as time has gone on. She is a symbol of the great talent that came out of Hollywood when Hollywood folk once came from nothing. She had no money, no land, no importance and she came from nowhere special to become one of the greatest and most recognised actresses of her era. I think she is honestly a woman of great achievements and deserves far more recognition than she gets.