Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil (1926). A famous kiss in cinema, but it’s the buildup to it that is so CRAZEEEEEE. They just put it off … and put it off … and tease … and smolder … and smolder harder … and there’s all this business with a cigarette (going from her mouth to his) … and the flare of a match … and still … no kiss … These people have the patience of Job. But it’s worth it when it comes.
I am having so much fun reading my friend Dan Callahan’s third book, The Art of American Screen Acting 1912-1960. Each actor Dan has chosen has a chapter: Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, James Cagney … It’s going chronologically, starting with Gish and ending with James Dean, the dawn of a new era. I just finished the Marlene Dietrich chapter (Dan gets into what she does and how she does it like no other). We all know these people on sight. People could pick Marlene Dietrich out of a crowd even if they haven’t seen any of her films. But even serious film fans find it challenging to describe what it is that makes Dietrich Dietrich. (And Garbo is even harder. Forgetaboutit.) They can describe the RESULT, but they can’t break her persona down into its different parts to figure out HOW she did it. Dan CAN, though. At any rate, his book is a gold mine. Greta Garbo is one of my favorites. Mysterious was her whole thing: she beckons and she conceals. Simultaneously. I’ve seen her major films – Queen Christine, Camille, Anne Karenina, Ninotchka, her first “talkie” Anna Christie, so I’m going back to rewatch some of them in order to follow along with Dan’s observations. (His paragraph on her death scene in Camille is amazing.)
Garbo and Gilbert brought out one another’s passions – they had true chemistry. His eyes burn when he looks at her, and it’s not “I am a movie actor and I burn with passion because this is a love scene” kind of burning. It’s something else. Something very true, and you can see it in the clip above. Nobody fell in love like Garbo. With her, love was always a full-bodied response. She quivers with orgasmic shudders, she throws back her head revealing her neck but – as Dan observes – in her most famous love scenes, she’s the “top.” Always.
I re-watched Camille, which is some kind of high watermark in film acting never surpassed since – but it’s its own thing, the Garbo Thing. It can’t be replicated or even really compared to anyone else. There’s a tremendously emotional scene at the doorway of the country cottage where Lionel Barrymore (who plays her young lover’s father) insists that she – the woman of the world party girl – give up his son so that he can have a chance at a good and honorable life. The scene is a gigantic one, for both characters. They start out one way – defensive, angry – and then it shifts, and she starts to realize she must make her great sacrifice and give her lover up, she must give him up to save him. It devastates her, and Lionel Barrymore sees it – and his energy shifts in response. This woman is not a “good” woman, but her love for his son is clearly authentic, and he suddenly understands what it is she will be giving up, how much she will lose. He aches with compassion for her then. He shifts into huge tenderness and gratitude, almost fatherly, he’s almost comforting her. (By the end of the scene, you’re wrung dry with emotion). He slowly goes to the door, bent back, filled with sorrow. She follows him, and reaches out her arm to him saying, gently:
Goodbye, Monsieur. Don’t reproach yourself. You’ve done only what a man’s father should have done. Only don’t let him know it. He might hate you and I don’t want that to happen. Because he will need all the courage and comfort you can give him. For a long time, I think.
In the first part of her little speech, Barrymore is looking down, saddened and distressed. Around the time she says, with that pure generosity, “I don’t want that to happen” … he looks up at her, and suddenly his face transforms – he’s getting the Full Garbo at almost point-blank range – he is overwhelmed by her, by what she is giving him, and by the emotion that floods him in response.
She was … special. Truly “touched,” you might say.
