OVP: Romance (1930)

Film: Romance (1930)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Gavin Gordon
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Director, Best Actress-Greta Garbo)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There have been many great actors in the history of cinema, but far fewer are the ranks of movie stars.  It's a rare breed, and something difficult to qualify.  After all, what makes a movie star?  Is it simply someone who is a leading actor, someone with great longevity, someone who transcends any era?  Is it an extinct species of Hollywood's Golden Age (this, I definitely disagree with-the likes of Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and even younger movie stars like Ryan Gosling could rank alongside the best of the 1940's and 1950's)?  Perhaps the best way to describe a movie star is o take a quote from Justice Potter Stewart out of context: "it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it."  And when I see Greta Garbo, I know I'm looking at a movie star.

One of the weird side effects of movie stars, since they always appear ageless, is that they also occasionally appear older than they actually are in their initial films, and so it's difficult to comprehend that Garbo was barely 25 when this film came out.  At the time, she had just finished her first talkie and was the toast of MGM, alongside Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford.  Her place at the top of the cinematic heap is evident with the confidence she exudes in this role, laughing and smiling gaily as she plays a "lost" woman, a beautiful opera singer torn between an older (Stone) and younger (Gordon) man.

The film is not what you'd call "strong," even by the melodramatic metric of the time.  The moral code of Gordon's character especially is horribly dated, and the fact that (SPOILER ALERT) Garbo ends up leaving him and becomes a nun is evident that the film was clearly made in 1930 and not even 1960.  And yet, Brown, a largely forgotten director now despite having six Oscar nominations to his credit, knows how to use his greatest asset, Ms. Garbo.  Every scene he lights her up with a glowing aura, as if a goddess has descended onto the screen and he only has a few moments to capture her before she fades.  It's a truly remarkable thing, and even as Garbo tosses out lines so heavy-handed they'd make John Keats look cynical, you don't particularly care.  You just want to stay on her, absorbing the magic this screen star (there's no other word for it) is radiating.

I'd write more, but I'm actually going out in a few minutes and the film is terribly short (at only 76 minutes, it's one of the shorter films to ever compete for Best Actress), but I have to end with a few questions for thought.  What do you think defines a movie star?  Was there or is there another Garbo, or was she one for the ages?  And what's your favorite of her many (largely unseen by the general public) films?