Greta Garbo Centenary
September 18 and 19, 2005

Celebrating the centenary of Greta Garbo’s birth, these screenings feature restored prints of the Swedish actress’s earliest European films. The eternal luminosity and emotional power that defined Garbo were evident from the start, particularly in the films she made with Mauritz Stiller and G. W. Pabst in the 1920s. These supporting roles exemplify the pre-Hollywood, pre-stardom Swedish actress in all her ingénue splendor, burnishing the screen with the rare intensity that would make her a screen legend. Garbo’s appearances as an extra in silent Swedish features (under the name Greta Gustafson) as well as a 1948 Hollywood screen test are added attractions in this centennial tribute.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film and Media, as part of a Greta Garbo centennial celebration supported by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York, in association with Scandinavia House. Special thanks to the Swedish Film Institute and the Munich Film Archives.

Gösta Berlings saga (The Saga of Gosta Berling). 1924. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. With Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundeqvist. Newly acquired by MoMA, Stiller’s sprawling, episodic film makes clever use of flashbacks in bringing Selma Lagerlöf’s discursive novel to the screen. Julius Jaenzon’s nighttime photography is imaginative and rare for its time, exemplified in the famous scene where Gosta (Hanson) takes the Italian Countess Dohna (Garbo) on his sled across the frozen lake. “We see that shimmering face, that ethereal look, that fineness of expression for the first time in all their beauty. One would not have to be a demonic hero or a ravenous wolf to want to pursue her” (Arthur Lennig). Swedish intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. Approx. 165 min.
Sunday, September 18, 1:30. T1; Monday, September 19, 7:00. T2

Reklamfilm PUB Greta Garbo. 1921. Sweden. Approx. 3 min.
Luffar-Petter. 1922. Sweden. Approx. 4 min.
Testfilm Greta Garbo. 1948. USA. Universal-International. Approx. 3 min.
Die Freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street). 1925. Germany. Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. With Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Werner Krauss. Pabst breathes life into this somber tale of Viennese life in the 1920s, when few could escape the aftermath of a brutal world war. In the first of her many tragic roles, Garbo plays an innocent young girl who is forced to confront the harsh realities of hunger, inflation, chaos, and greed all too soon. “…[E]ven in those days Garbo had that indefinable something which draws your eyes to the one unbroken filly in the field and keeps you from looking at all the others” (James Agate). Approx. 90 min. English intertitles. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. Program approx. 100 min.
Sunday, September 18, 5:00. T1; Monday, September 19, 5:00. T2

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