14/11/2024 - Lorna Tucker’s latest exploration of female icons ventures into the mysteries of Swedish screen idol Greta Garbo, voiced by Noomi Rapace

After her creative documentary portraits on Vivienne Westwood in Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lorna Tucker
film profile] and Katharine Hepburn in Call Me Kate, British filmmaker Lorna Tucker now takes on Greta Garbo. Befitting of the birthplace of the Swedish screen idol, Garbo: Where Did You Go? [+see also:
interview: Lorna Tucker
film profile] has world-premiered at the 35th Stockholm International Film Festival. Special mention is due regarding the premiere venue – the Capitol movie theatre, an art-deco wonder built in 1926 and screening many a Garbo title in “real time”, well before the coining of the phrase “The Golden Age of Cinema” while right in the very midst of it.

For good reason, there are plenty of Garbo documentaries out there. TCM has put out a couple, The South Bank Show did one, there’s a Finnish production with a partial focus on her Helsinki-born “discoverer”, director Mauritz Stiller, plus quite a few Swedish exposés through the years. Though some were made while she was alive, The Divine One herself is perennially absent from any personal involvement, admirably adding to the enigma. Long before her last earthly breath in 1990, she had ascended into that otherworldly stuff that dreams are made of, shunning all glamour and, in the process, becoming the most glamorous – of them all, why not.

Garbo: Where Did You Go? begins with a definition: “The Greta Garbo Syndrome: a state where celebrated personalities lose the meaning of life and shut themselves in.” We then meet The Investigator (US actress/comic and former Westwood model Ellyn Daniels), likely an alter ego of the director, compiling information. “The greats today will one day be forgotten. Only a few will achieve success so great they’ll be remembered long after they’re gone. But as time passes… so does the truth.” The investigation commences, rich in film clips, archive footage, rare stills, letter excerpts and even recorded phone conversations, venturing off into the mystery of the disappearance of she who could have done anything she wanted to at the absolute height of her fame. But after what turned out to be her last film, the 1941 comedy Two-Faced Woman, where did she go?

Those recalling the reclusive Manhattanite female of 450 East 52nd Street from 1951 – who, for the rest of her life, lurked around the streets in dark glasses, hand covering her face, as seen in countless paparazzi photos (“No-Faced Woman”?) – may already know, but they should still be intrigued. As should any budding classic-film-buff audience from the younger generations. Atmospheric accounts of the modest origins of the then-named Greta Gustafsson are provided, and on hand for insightful reflections is a hand-picked group of exclusively Swedish origin, among them director-critic Stig Björkman, writer-director Lena Einhorn and grandnephew Scott Reisfield. Garbo herself is voiced by fellow Swedish screen icon Noomi Rapace.

Garbo: Where Did You Go? was produced by the UK’s Embankment Films and Mylla Films. Its sales are handled by Fremantle.