The Divine Woman

Divine Woman, The (1928)

This film is sadly lost but there are nine minutes available for viewing and these sometimes turn up on Turner Classic Movies. The nine minutes available have a soldier (Lars Hanson) getting ready to leave for war but first stops by to see the woman (Greta Garbo) he loves. Being a Sjostrom/Garbo teaming you know film buffs everywhere would love for a complete print to turn up but I'd rather have these nine minutes than nothing at all. There's not too much we can really tell from such a short section of a movie but I would say that you could view this as a one-reeler and it would be very entertaining. Both Garbo and Hanson appear to be in fine form and there's a nice visual style as well. I'm not sure what the history is behind this film or how this one fragment is still available but the quality is very nice so hopefully the rest will turn up at some point.

The Divine Woman, although short, is one of the most beautiful films in which I have seen Greta Garbo. The film is not as heavy as some of her other work, although there are some sad undertones. The fact that The Divine Woman is a silent film really makes the movie stand out from Miss Garbo's other movies, and because it is silent, the passion, sadness, happiness, and all other emotions of the characters shine through more than they normally would in a talking film. Since only a small portion (a few minutes) of this film are known to exist, there is added intrigue about the film, and even in its brevity, the film seems complete. This movie is one of the best of all time, especially since it is a very different type of film for Greta Garbo.

FYI, the duration of the one-glorious-reel of this film is *exactly* nine minutes. It is frequently aired during the 15 minutes before a full-length Greta_Garbo film on TCM. At the start, it states that it is "Presented by Turner Entertainment Co.", with this sentence: "This is the only section of this film known to exist". The film has Russian text written in-frame with English subtitles. Only three of the cast appear in the 9 minutes: Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Polly Moran. Miss Garbo was about 23 years young in this film; her lusciousness and tender affection are stunning!

THE DIVINE WOMAN by Victor Sjostrom is the only film with Greta Garbo that is mainly lost. As a few reviewers already mentioned, only one short reel survived, was found in Moscow archive in 1993 and is now part of the Garbo DVD collection. According to this reel, one can infer that in THE DIVINE WOMAN, Greta Garbo was as young and sexy as in FLESH AND THE DEVIL, as delicate as in THE MYSTERIOUS LADY and as overwhelmingly beautiful as in A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS. Besides, there is something more that is not so visible in her earlier films.

There are a few factors that prove this movie must have been significant for Garbo as an actress and as a person:

• the director, Victor Sjostrom, a Swede, famous for a popular silent THE WIND (1928) with Lilian Gish and Lars Hanson. He was the director whom Garbo highly respected. He was not that critical in her life as Mauritz Stiller, but he also had an impact on her career in Hollywood. Moreover, THE DIVINE WOMAN is the one and only film she made with Sjostrom.

• it is another, this time the third, movie in which Garbo plays by the side of an aforementioned Swedish actor, Lars Hanson. Before, she worked with him on the set of SAGA OF GOSTA BERLING (1925) by Stiller and an unforgettable FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926) by Brown.

• THE DIVINE WOMAN was one of the first movies where Garbo was given a different, a more ambitious role than a shy Countess Dohma in TORRENT (1926) or a vamp Elena in THE TEMPTRESS (1926). This movie, though not that significant as FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926) started a more complex portrayal of characters by Garbo and allowed her for a wider choice.

It is a great pity that so little of it has survived. Nevertheless, some people would probably say that better something than nothing at all. True! At least this "something" proves again what a divine actress she was.

This is a lost film, save for one reel found in a Russian archive. But what a reel! Lars Hanson is a soldier due to ship out at midnight, and Garbo is the lover who will not let him go. The tension, sensitivity, passion, and sense of doom conveyed in this scene makes it all the more tragic that this is Garbo's only lost film. Victor Sjostrom, who directed Lillian Gish in two of her greatest films, seems to have been a perfect match for Garbo as well. Look for this fragment on Turner Classic Movies; they program it between feature films fairly often.