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Greta Garbo's Ideological Appeal

Greta Garbo was a film star whose screen appeal displayed different readings and signification to her audience. During her stardom period, a veil of mediated mystery and eccentricity surrounded even her private life. Her stardom reputation was even a recurrent issue of the films' story like Grand Hotel (1932). Garbo's position, in comparison with other Hollywood actresses was clearly categorised as a different and unusual status. As John Bainbridge writes in his work Garbo:

As the legendary woman of mystery, Greta Garbo has baffled journalist at home and abroad. She has eluded them both in body and spirit. Groping for the revealing phrase that would provide a clue to the unguessed mystery, they have had to settle for something rather common, such as "the Swedish Sphinx", the "unapproachable Sphinx", "the dazzling enigma" and so on.27

Camille is a film that exemplifies the cinematic treatment of an ideological issue. Garbo plays the role of Marguerite Gautier, who is an extravagant society lady and the most desired woman in Paris. Marguerite's society is inserted within a bourgeois way of life, fullfil of luxury, big parties and the social ritual of courtship. Camille is remembered as Greta Garbo's best movie; not only because her image and performance dominates the entire film 28 but also because the embodiment of contradictory social values.

When Marguerite plays her social-determined role, a different woman emerges: she is sarcastic, cold and selfish with her lover Armand Duval who lives and suffers of the 'essence of eternal love'. Marguerite loves in order to achieve social recognition and status. At one point, the film's the narrative projects an evident element of ideological contradiction. Armand's father has to persuade Marguerite to avoid the eminent marriage between she and Armand, arguing that this event will damage Armand's position in society. Eventually Marguerite will accepts this offer in order to follow the social conventions. It can be said that the male dependant argument suggested by Marjorie Rose clearly seems to be confirmed.

If Camille successfully presented a big picture of the most common social and moral conventions, the film Ninotchka addresses a more general ideological discourse. Ninotchka is a comedy that focuses its story into the struggle between capitalistic and communist values. A Soviet Trade Commission is deployed to Paris in order to sell the jewels belonging to a former Russian countess, but the countess' representative Leon, who delighted the soviet officials with the capitalistic commodities, diverts the task. When the mission is failed, a soviet high commissar, Ninotchka Yakushova (played by Greta Garbo) is sent to straighten up the negotiations, but fell in love with Leon.

The sense of irony displayed in the film deals directly with many capitalistic and communist icons, such scenes involving a Lenin's portrayal and the Eiffel Tower. In spite of Ernst Lubitsch's remarkable direction 29, the mere presence of Greta Garbo attracts the attention. Ninotchka may prove that the stereotypical concept of communism is embodied by her particular femininity personality. Ninotchka is cold, sarcastic, and some times aggressive 30 about the capitalistic world and its social conventions.

Garbo's previous Hollywood performances had already created a specific type of identification among the audience and the media. Her reputation of femme fatale was in some ways obvious and dangerous for society. John Bainbridge notes that,

The peerless symbol of gorgeous tragedy, she (Greta Garbo) had made her special province the portrayal of women, who, judged by bourgeois morality, are so destructive of the established order that they do not deserve to end their days happily.31

In addition, her star image was labelled as radical from the rest of Hollywood actresses. Michael Wood, in his work America in the Movies writes that,

We should probably separate Garbo's films from the game, since she and Dietrich, in their similar and dissimilar ways, both represented the alluring eternal female rather than the threatening contemporary woman as played by Bette Davis or Joan Crawford.32

Ninotchka presented a dual female personality role. She drives herself in a level between the superwoman and superfemale type, mostly because of the projection of male characteristics, intelligence and sense of imagination. Furthermore, the film's does not show a 'tragic' narrative that was often a sign of her screen performances. As Gary Carey (1980) describes:

Garbo was the great stoic of the American cinema. She knew nothing would work out of the way it should (the happy endings in some of her films seem false); bowed beneath the weight of this knowledge, and through the beauty of the obeisame, she gave tragic resonance to shallow art.33

The reference of Camille and Ninotchka suggests a general direction of the possible approaches by which Greta Garbo can be studied. In order to cover the aims of this exploratory essay, it would be fair to say that Greta Garbo's star image clearly embodied an ideological meaning and also many ideological contradictions associated with the particular historical context of 1930s decade.

Conclusion

Clearly, Greta Garbo is a complex star image to analyse. There are many factors that configure different interpretations behind her 'magnetic' and melancholic personality. As many stars' image, her construction depends in the reception on audiences within a particular social context. Film stars' popularity is connected with its charismatic appeal, which may present elements of fetishism34, sexual ambiguities or, in Richard Dyer's own words 'ideological contradictions'. Moreover, further ideological representations can be studied referring Greta Garbo's star image, such her box-office success in Europe and the reception of her non "all-American star" 1930s image in European audiences. Richard Carey have describe some of the ideological implications when MGM decided to offer a 'new Americanised' Garbo in Two Faced Woman:

As the actress seemed to realise from the beginning, the attempt was doomed to failure. Just as the Grabo character has no profession, or definite social status, she also has no nationality, yet because of her mystery, she seems vaguely foreign.35

Besides the ideological representation approach, still other readings may emerge. Contemporary scholars tend to work in revealing an invisible and evident 'lesbian' personality in some of the 1930s Hollywood's female stars, including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis 36. Greta Garbo's cinematic image can be also studied in terms of contemporary audience's taste. Even a decade after the release of Camille, Garbo's appeal became even stronger, as David Shipman pointed out:

From the corny melodramatics of the re-issued Camille, she distils more sheer beauty than the post-war generation has ever seen. Emerging again from eclipse, she is a more refulgent star by comparison with the evanescent gallery of hellcats and cuties who succeeded her.37

Greta Garbo's ideological exploration may suggest that film stars are a recurrent academic reference in order to study all the existing connections between audience reception, cultural conventions, and film narrative.

Bibliography

1. Richard Anobile, ed., Ninotchka, New York: Darien House, 1975.
2. John Bainbridge, Garbo, London: Frederick Muller, 1955.
3. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, London: Vintage, 1993
4. Gary Carey 'Garbo' in Richard Roud, ed., Cinema. A Critical Dictionary, London: Secker&Warburg, 1980. Vol. 1. pp.415-419.
5. Richard Dyer, Stars, London, BFI, 1998 (2nd. Ed.)
6. John Hill, 'Ideology, Economy and the British Cinema' in Robert Stam and Toby Miller, eds., Film and Theory. An Anthology, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. pp.565-576.
7. Heinz Ickstadt and Brian Lee eds., The Thirties. Politics and Culture in a Time of Broken Dreams, Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1987.
8. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
9. Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship, London: Routledge, 1993.
10. Paul McDonald, The Star System. Hollywood's Production of Popular Identities, London: Wallflower, 2000.
11. Robert Ray, A certain tendency of the Hollywood cinema. 1930-1980, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
12. Hector Rodriguez, 'Ideology and Film Culture' in Richard Allen and Murray Smith, eds., Film Theory and Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. pp. 260-281.
13. Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing. Hollywood cinema and female spectatorship, London: Routledge, 1994.
14. David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars. The Golden Years, London: Macdonald, 1989. Vol. 1. 2nd. Ed.
15. Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction, Cornwall: Blackwell, 2000.
16. Andrea Weiss, 'A Queer Feeling When I Look at You: Hollywood Stars and Lesbian Spectatorship' in Christie Gledhill, ed., Stardom: Industry of Desire, London: Routledge, 1991. pp. 283-299.
17. Michael Wood, America in the Movies, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Filmography

1. Camille (1936)/ directed by George Cukor. USA: MGM.
2. Grand Hotel (1932) /directed by Edmund Goulding. USA: MGM.
3. Ninotchka (1939)/ directed by Ernst Lubitsch. USA: MGM.

NOTES AND REFERENCES:

27. BAINBRIDGE, J. Garbo, p. 10.

28. Ibid., p. 190.

29. ANOBILE, R. Ninotchka, p. 6.

30. Richard Dyer reflects and the way the superwoman type embody a radical/counterpart to the dominant female types. As he notes:
"The 'superfemale' seems inevitably to be shown as demoniac in her actions, and it is hard to distinguish her too firmly from other 'strong', 'magnetic' types as the bitch (Davis), the femme fatale and the aristocratic type (Hepburn), all of which strongly discount the value of female strenght and intelligence." DYER, Op cit., pp. 54-55

31. BAINBRIDGE, J. Op cit., p. 207.

32. WOOD, M. America in the Movies, p. 69.

33. CAREY, G. Cinema. A Critical Dictionary, Vol.1, p. 418.

34. Roland Barthes has described a cultural interpretation based on Greta Garbo's face. As he suggests:
"Garbo's face represents this fragile moment when the cinema is about to drawn an existential from an essential beauty, when the archetype leans, towards the fascination of mortal faces, when the clarity of the flesh as essence yields its place to a lyricism of woman." in Mythologies, p. 57.

35. CAREY, R. Op cit., p. 419.

36. WEISS, A. A queer feeling when I look at you . . ., pp. 283-299.

37. SHIPMAN, D. The Great Movie Stars, p. 244.