À la recherche de Garbo

I can't add too much to the other reviews. We have a devoted son trying to fulfill his mother's wish, and he goes to extremes in order to fulfill it, all the while trying to unknowingly fulfill his own.

I saw this film when it was first released, and was just astounded as to its simple form. It was heart warming and heart wrenching all at once, though I didn't feel it at the time, but admired its simplicity in form. This is the kind of film making they simply don't do anymore. The shots are basic, functional, non-energetic, and do their job. No steadicam work, no overhead remote wire work, nor sweeping helicopter shots. And for that matter there's no wit filled dialogue. No excessive use of foul language. No explosions, gunshots nor car chases. No phony and juvenile romantic moments. No fake intimacy. No fabricated outlandish scenarios. No pre-teen raunch jokes and humor. None of that.

It's the way movies used to be. The movie going audience was different back then. More mature. More adult. More willing to behave themselves and take life seriously but also acknowledge a time and place to have fun. They were also smarter when it came to the human condition. They weren't raised on fast food cinema with superheros gallivanting around CGI worlds. It was a different time. A different place. It's what going to the movies used to be like.

And that's who this film is for. For those people, the movie audience of yesterday, who didn't mind taking in a matinée to see a romance or detective story on the screen. The kind of movie goer who wasn't waiting to be wowed by the next big breakthrough in special effects, CGI and other technical wizardry. They went for the actors and story.

And those are the kind of films Greta Garbo was in. Oh sure, she was beautiful to be sure, but she was also an actress with reclusive tendencies--a quirk that made her legendary among her comeliness and presence on screen. People thought she was beautiful, and then her natural character was captured via lens and film to relay to the movie going audience of the 30s and 40s. People fell in love with her, her characters, her performances, and her films.

In this film we bring all those elements together to form a compound for the classic movie lover who lived in the 80s. For anyone who loves their mother, for anyone who loves classic films, for anyone with a misled faith in Hollywood endings, such as I and many others, this film is for you.

I haven't seen it since it was first released. And it was a pleasure to see it again.

Check it out.

Anne Bancroft has one of my favorite "renowned actress who really wants a great part" stories regarding this movie. She wanted the role, but Sidney Lumet wasn't going to give it to her. He'd just seen one of her husband's (Mel Brooks) lesser known, but still good movies, "To Be or Not To Be," and told her he was looking for someone older, less glamorous, less beautiful.

And she said, "Look, in that movie, I was carefully photographed, I was lovingly lit, and I was sleeping with the producer!"

So she got the part. And did such a good job.

Ron Silver's decision to try and grant his dying mother's wish to meet Greta Garbo becomes an all-consuming obsession in "Garbo Talks" (***1/2). This unusual story touches upon a theme that is seldom explored with much depth in films: the effect the movies or a particular star may have on our entire lives. How many of us have had the experience of watching a golden oldie that evokes a vivid memory of where we were and what our lives were like the very first time we saw it? Most of us, I'll bet. This thought is crystallized in the funny and touching monologue Anne Bancroft delivers in her hospital bed to her idol as she tells Garbo what her films have meant to her during key moments of her life. Ron Silver is effectively low-key as Bancroft's devoted son, and the telling cameos contributed by a great supporting cast playing assorted New York oddballs he meets during his odyssey are a special bonus (Hermione Gingold is a rare hoot). There are a few gaps that could probably have been filled in better between the vignettes (I would have been curious to know how Silver spent his night on Fire Island after missing the last ferry boat), but all-in-all this is a wonderful little sleeper. Those who are tuned into it will know what I mean.

This is not a film about Greta Garbo, and La Garbo isn't in the movie, not really. Moreover, from a writer's perspective, Greta Garbo could have been any quest that we seek with sincerity and purity of intention. But in this case it is Garbo, and her mystique permeates this film through her haunting absence, which lends Garbo Talks its beautiful sense of longing.

Anne Bancroft gives a tour de force performance as the dying mother who never stops championing her causes, and wishes only one thing; to meet Garbo before she dies. Ron Silver is her put upon son who sacrifices everything, including his marriage to a hilariously unsympathetic Carrie Fisher to give his mother her dying wish.

Hermione Gingold is utterly side splitting as one of the improbable steps in young Gilbert's search for the elusive Garbo. Harvey Fierstein is brilliant in his understated portrayal of a gay man Gilbert meets on the ferry to Fire Island, where he hopes to find Garbo at her retreat.

Garbo is played by the incomparable Betty Comden, seven time Tony Award winning composer who co-wrote such classics as Singin' in the Rain, Auntie Mame, Bells are Ringing, and the Barkley's of Broadway.

There is a scene, late in the movie, where Bancroft is delivering a soliloquy, which stands as one of my favorite moments in film. Sally Field should have given her Oscar that year to Bancroft. It is only then, in her emotional epiphany, that Ms. Bancroft reveals the delicate yet powerful theme of the film. It was never about Garbo. She was merely a symbol of the quest to find a unifying thread that gives meaning to a life remembered. The buildup may be tauntingly slow, but the payoff is astounding.

Why do I love this movie? It's about a feeling, a mood, a tone, owing in large part to Sidney Lumet's light yet masterful touch. The lyrical pace and the glorious ending are movie art, floating as gentle as a cloud above the din of its heavy handed contemporaries.

A beautiful, simple little movie about the love between a mother and her son.

I saw this many years ago, and when I finally found a copy on VCR, snapped it up for my mom... It's now her very favorite movie and gets watched (and recited-along-with!) on a regular basis. It's made her quite the belle of the ball, with all of her friends dying to borrow it!

If your mom likes movies from the 40s, and loved Steel Magnolias, get her this and watch it together.

And if either of you can sit through the scene where Gilbert confronts his mother's idol without crying at the sweetness of the exchange, the panic and vulnerability in his whole being, you're tougher than we are!

Lovely!