Style Icon: Greta Garbo

Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.

Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo," Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers [Farrar, Straus, 1986, ISBN 8090-1369-X/0470], p. 56

Oh the 20s, the glories twenties. Silent films. There is something about silent films. It makes you focus on the actors and all the details about them. Just look at Greta Garbo!

Greta Garbo was a silent film actress in Sweden and Germany in the 20s until being signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood. First a star of the silent films, she made the transition to talkie movies. She retired in the early 40s and was largely unseen in public until she died. She never gave interviews, signed autographs or appeared at movie premieres, which only added to the mystique of her persona.

Born: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on 18 September 1905 in Stockholm, Sweden
Died: 15 April 1990 in New York, United States

I think Greta Garbo was one of the most beautiful actresses of the 20s and 30s. There is just something about here – that look in her eyes! Or maybe it’s her whole aura. Something dreamy about her....

Oh this all reminds me to find more silent films to watch...