Garbo was an icon rather than artist, famous for who she was rather than what she did, says Robert Gottlieb in his new biography of the legendary film star
Luxuriously attired as Anna Karenina or Mata Hari, Garbo shone for the camera. She swooned, she wept, she ravishingly died, a vision of unknowable Swedish beauty. The costumier atremarked that no one else wore gowns with such ease. Her grey-blue eyes were her best feature and dazzled even in black and white. As a teenager she beguiled the director Mauritz Stiller, who helped make her famous. “There is something quite extraordinary about that girl,” he said. “I must discover what it is.
A paradox runs through this astute and entertaining book. It is a portrait of a celebrated actor whose films are mostly terrible. “Susan Lenox” is a “hodgepodge of nonsense”, says Mr Gottlieb; “Two-Faced Woman” is “a ghastly mess”. Only “Camille” and “Ninotchka” receive enthusiastic praise—but even Garbo’s best films now come across as gauzy melodramas at best, camp spectacles at worst. She is the main reason to watch any of them.
Even in an account as engaging as this, though, she appears vapid in her private life. She lacked intellectual curiosity, the author reports, and was not especially witty. She collected Renoirs but kept them wrapped in cheesecloth. Her friends and lovers were tossed away like handkerchiefs. Mr Gottlieb’s judgment is questionable in its generosity: “Certainly she used people ruthlessly, but peopleshe was given a private tour, during which she opined on the colour of the carpets.
Tellingly, Mr Gottlieb compares Garbo to two other movie stars: Marilyn Monroe and Meryl Streep. Although he praises Garbo’s acting, today anyone watching her embrace a bouquet of flowers in “A Woman of Affairs” may think she was overdoing it. She seems better paired with Monroe, remembered most for her allure and mystique, than with Ms Streep, a masterful thespian with chameleonic powers.
Garbo was an icon rather than an artist, famous for who she was rather than what she did. “Maybe she wasn’t really very interesting,” Mr Gottlieb concludes of his elusive subject. “Who could tell?”This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Two faces of a star"
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