A Living Enigma: Films of Greta Garbo

Depot Chair of Trustees Robert Senior discusses the legacy of Greta Garbo, as we screen three of her greatest films. This talk will take place prior to our screening of Flesh and the Devil (film must be booked separately).

The Swedish actress Greta Garbo is arguably the greatest film actress of all time and certainly the most enigmatic and legendary. After a successful career in silent films she only made a dozen sound pictures but she became the most famous actress in the world before suddenly retiring, in 1941, at the age of 36. Famous for the line “I want to be left alone” she became a living enigma.

Depot is screening three of her best films. The erotic drama Flesh and the Devil (1926) charts a doomed romance between her character and the matinee idol, John Gilbert. The film was way ahead of its time in projecting erotic and Garbo is mesmerizing. In Camille (George Cukor, 1936) she dominates a young courtesan played by Robert Taylor and fends off a husband played by Henry Darnell. And in probably her best film, Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) she plays in her first comedy (Garbo Laughs! was the famous tagline).

– Robert Senior, Depot Chair of Trustees