GARBO (2005) B/W & C 90m dir: Kevin Brownlow

From the Turner Classic Movies website, www.turnerclassicmovies.com: "Filmmaker and cinema historian Kevin Brownlow and his Photoplay Productions, who have created documentary portraits of such screen icons as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and D.W. Griffith, are creating GARBO, a new look back on Garbo's fascinating career and life, narrated by Oscar®-winning actress Julie Christie. GARBO's world premiere will be on September 6 at 8p.m. (ET). Included in the film will be interviews with Garbo biographers Karen Swenson, Mark Vieira and Barry Paris, as well as author and friend Gore Vidal, actor/playwright Charles Busch and Gavin Lambert. Archival footage includes comments from Clarence Brown, one of Garbo's favorite directors, and George Cukor. Also included will be an interview with Mimi Pollak, Garbo's closest friend from drama school, and test footage from the never-completed Ducheses de Langeais."

"Greta Garbo Profile by Robert Osborne:

"There is an extraordinary moment at the end of the excellent new documentary Garbo, which we're premiering on TCM this month (Sept. 6 at 8 pm Eastern, with a repeat at 11:30 pm), that is going to stun you: it's our Star of the Month, the great Greta Garbo in 122 seconds of a screen test she made in May 1949 - eight years after she'd faced movie cameras for the final time in October 1941. In the test footage, she is, at age 43, as luminous and beautiful as she ever was on film in her heyday, a sad reminder of what we all lost when she decided to stop making movies at the early age of 36. But she had her reasons. Her final film, 1941's Two-Faced Woman, had been a blatant attempt to turn her into a combination of Claudette Colbert and/or Irene Dunne to make her more appealing to the average American moviegoer.

"For years the public had loved to read about the comings and goings of Garbo, but John Q. Public didn't rush to see her films; Garbo suffering in Tolstoy didn't have the box-office allure of Joan Crawford dancing in her scanties. But, from all reports, Garbo didn't intend for that 1941 outing to be her permanent swan song. True, she'd often toyed with the idea of stepping off the filmmaking merry-go-round, something that became more and more appealing to her as she noticed the tiny lines that began appearing near her upper lip. 'I am old!,' she said gloomily to George Cukor one day. 'Those lines will get deeper. I must quit.' But, actually, she'd been threatening to stop, for one reason or another, ever since she made her first Hollywood film at the age of 19 back in 1925. But in 1941, she decided she would take a hiatus, primarily because she knew the major profits from her films came from the European market which was being cut off because of the war overseas. She also knew that if she was to be able to make the kind of films she wanted to do (including a project about Joan of Arc) that overseas revenue was essential.

"Her plan was to resume her acting, at least on a limited basis, after the war ended. And the offers were always plentiful. There was talk she might do The Paradine Case for producer David O. Selznick and a biography of George Sand; the numerous other possibilities included Mourning Becomes Electra and I Remember Mama. But the closest she came to working again was doing The Duchess of Langeais for producer Walter Wanger, costarring James Mason and based on the novel by Balzac. That's the reason she did those awesome 1949 photographic tests. It was to prove that, even after nearly a decade, she was still highly photogenic and a commanding screen presence, something which Wanger hoped would help him secure backing for the Duchess project. Unfortunately the financing never materialized. That was such a crushing blow to Garbo she never seriously considered any further film offers. It was one thing for her to not want to work - it was another to not have people care if she did or didn't return.

"This year marks the 100th anniversary of her birth; since we have all of the American films of Greta Garbo in our extensive TCM library, we're delighted to be able to bring you the most comprehensive retrospective of this great star that's ever been shown in one place before. When you watch her films, and the fascinating new documentary by Kevin Brownlow, you'll readily see why it's a such a loss that G.G. chucked it all and disappeared from the screen at such an early age. But it also gives us another reason to thank heavens for film. The work she did do so matchlessly over a 17-year period does still exist, and you can wallow in it all month long on TCM - presented in striking prints which look as if the films were made last week."