Newsgroup: it.discussioni.misteri
Titolo: Svelato perchè Greta Garbo volle restare sola

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1742796,00.html
Footage of the star's final - and unsuccessful - 
screen test has been found

stanz <st...@ubiquo.altrove> wrote:

EAUTIFUL, laughing and vibrant, Greta Garbo — the sultry European film
icon of the 1920s and 1930s — belies her mysterious image in this
recently rediscovered footage of her taking her final screen test.
These are her last moments on film. Hollywood's producers were
unimpressed and, bewildered and depressed, Garbo retreated into her life
as a recluse.
The extraordinary footage casts new light on her decision to spend the
rest of her life in New York, craving only to be left alone.
Her playful behaviour in the footage is at odds with the image of the
woman who, at the age of 36, left Hollywood for ever and became the most
famous hermit in New York.
She is seen in close-up, playfully messing up her hair and grinning as
she asks the cameraman whether she can light a cigarette.
The material, which dates from 1949, is an 18-minute test for a film she
never made, called The Duchess of Langeais, with which she had hoped to
relaunch her career after the war.
Even though she was still in her prime — and stunningly beautiful —
Hollywood was not prepared to invest in a comeback film. The producers'
reasons are bewildering.
The actress was devastated and never acted again, choosing to take
sanctuary in an apartment in Manhattan until her death in 1990.
The Garbo myth never subsided — she was always hounded by reporters and
ambushed by photographers.
These still photographs from the screen test are published for the first
time in The Times today before the footage is premiered at the National
Film Theatre next month.
"It's a revelation," said Kevin Brownlow, a leading British specialist
in silent films. "It's not the remote Garbo of the 1930s. She's behaving
completely naturally. She's not playing a role — that's enchanting. It's
quite a contrast to Anna Karenina."
Her behaviour in the footage supports claims made to him by members of
her family, including her niece, that she was a "great comedienne".
He has been given permission to use it as part of a documentary on the
husky-voiced star, which will be premiered in London on September 13.
The Duchess of Langeais, an adaptation of a Balzac novel, was to have
been directed by Max Ophuls.
The footage was unearthed in someone's garage in Los Angeles in 1998 by
Jeff Joseph, a film collector. Because it is a test for make-up and
lighting it is silent, but it is possible to read her lips. "Can I light
a cigarette?" she asks at one point, before playing with her hair and
smiling.
Her career had come to a standstill during the Second World War and The
Duchess of Langeais was meant to have been her comeback.
She had announced her retirement in 1941, which may have been because
the critics had panned her film Two-Faced Woman. 
This summer The Times Magazine revealed the story behind that disastrous
film, a comic drama about a woman who fears that her unglamorous
appearance is cooling her husband's ardour.
George Cukor, the director, ignored Garbo's desperate pleas not to be
filmed in a bathing suit and she loathed the scene. The film also
depended on her comic timing — and she thought that this was not her
strongest area.
Mr Brownlow said that while Bette Davies and Barbara Stanwyck made many
"duds", Garbo had not. She did not know how to handle criticism. "She
was horrified," he said.
It has been said that, of all the stars who have ever fired the
imagination of film audiences, none has quite projected a magnetism and
mystique equal to Garbo's. Her heroines were three-dimensional, sensual
and pure, suffering and hopeful.
Mr Brownlow has restored 35 silent classics, beginning with Abel Gance's
Napoleon, made in 1927, which he screened in 1980 with a live orchestra
and again last year at the Royal Festival Hall.
Its box-office success made television executives realise that audiences
have an insatiable appetite for the classics.
PATH TO FAME 
Born Greta Louise Gustafsson in 1905. Grew up in poverty in Stockholm
Appeared in her first talkie, Anna Christie, in 1930 with the slogan
"Garbo talks"
Her romance with John Gilbert, the screen star, captured world attention
but his depression and drinking meant it was doomed. Garbo loathed
people who got drunk
"Love is the beginning of a woman's education," she said. "Who has not
been in love? But marriage? There is my overwhelming desire to be alone"
Received a special Oscar for "her unforgettable screen performances"
Retired after her last film Two-Faced Woman 
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