in Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Ninotchka (1939)]] 
 With her last film, George Cukor's Two-Faced Woman (1941), MGM attempted to capitalize on Garbo's success as a comedienne by casting her in a romantic comedy which sought to portray her as an ordinary girl. She played a double role that featured her dancing the rumba, swimming, and skiing. The film was a critical, although not entirely a commercial, failure. Garbo referred to the film as "my grave". She retired in 1941 at the age of thirty-six after only twenty-seven films made in sixteen years. She was offered many roles in the coming years and showed interest in several, but in each case, she either turned down the part or the project did not come to fruition. 

 In 1948, Garbo signed a contract for $200,000 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina in 1933, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais. Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct. Garbo made several screen tests, learned the script, and arrived in Rome in the summer of 1949 to shoot the picture. However, the financing failed to materialize and the project was abandoned. The screen tests—the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera—were thought to have been lost for forty years before resurfacing in someone's garage. Parts of the screen tests were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo.