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Greta Garbo: Siren of the Close-up

2023; Volume: 53; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/flm.2023.a903045

1548-9922

B. Ulrich,

Cinema and Media Studies

Greta Garbo:Siren of the Close-up Bert Ulrich "That face, that face, what was it about that face? You could have read into it all the secrets of a woman's soul. You could read Eve, Cleopatra, Mata Hari. She became all women on the screen. Not on the sound stage. The miracle happened in that film emulsion. Who knows why? Marilyn Monroe had this same gift. That same trick of flesh impact – that is to say, their flesh registered for the camera and came across the screen as real flesh that you could touch, an image beyond photography."1 –Billy Wilder Although most Greta Garbo films are not considered masterpieces, her unique presence on screen resonated with audiences, especially during the latter 1920s and early 1930s at the apogee of her popularity. Sometimes caricatured for her physical appearance, as in Walt Disney's Mother Goose in Hollywood (1938) or Miguel Covarrubias' depiction of her in Vanity Fair (February1932), Garbo projected the antithesis of what was considered a star at the time: an almost scoliotic slouch, alleged large feet, a cold pout, a husky voice, a pathological sense of introversion, and a bulky cinematic presence that made other actors often look meek when sharing a screen with her. She was the opposite of contemporaries like Janet Gaynor or Jean Harlow. Her androgynous presence, most evident in Queen Christina (1933), attracted both sexes. Despite Garbo's singularities, her drawing card was her face and her ability to signal a mesmerizing array of feelings and thoughts. Particularly in close-up, she entranced filmgoers, transcending whatever plot or character she was inhabiting. Garbo emerged in early silent cinema in the tradition of Theda Bara, Nazimova, Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford, when actors were often groomed by studios categorically. Stars were typified, as in the gamine (Mary Pickford), the virgin (Lillian Gish), the vamp (Theda Bara), and the "It girl" (Clara Bow). Initially, executives at MGM molded the Garbo persona as an exotic mantrap, most notably in Flesh and the Devil (1927). As the amoral Felicitas, the actress woos men, breaks sacred friendships, commits adultery, and even incites vitriol from the clergy. However, Flesh and the Devil was not ultimately just another vamp picture. It inaugurated Garbo's fervent partnership with John Gilbert, who jumpstarted her career in a string of films with her. As a result, the actress became the object of desire by one of the most popular heart throbs of the day. Their ardent and tempestuous union in real life translated quite transparently on celluloid, prompting an equally ardent scopophilia from audiences. In Flesh and the Devil, Garbo and Gilbert exhibited intense sexual magnetism in love scenes, particularly in closeup: in a garden encounter, for example, with their faces lighted by only a match that she blows out to invite to a rapturous kiss, and in love-making scenes on a chaise lounge, and later in front of a roaring [End Page 19] fireplace, when Gilbert, as Leo von Harden, exclaims, "This is the end, Felicitas. I can blow out my brains or run away." For audiences, Garbo in her early films of the silent film era attracted the attention from both men and women. With Gilbert and others, she exhibited dominance in a love scene by often cupping a male's head in her hands. This unusual behavior is evident in Flesh in the Devil, when she almost drinks from Gilbert's mouth. One critic in Variety wrote, "Here is a picture that is the pay-off when it comes to filming love scenes. There are three in this picture which will make anyone fidget in their seat and their hair raise on end…."2 Reviewing her next film with Gilbert, Love (1927), another Variety critic instructed, "Try and keep the femmes away from this one. They've all apparently got a Gilbert-Garbo complex tucked away somewhere…The girls get a heavy kick out of the love stuff. They come out of these pictures with an 'I wonder-if-he's-learned-anything' expression. They claim the screen is the closest they can get to it. But pity the poor modern lover. He's so tired from holding...