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The archival footage and the people who were interviewed and spoke about Garbo and her life were fantastic. However, the theatrics of the woman (presumably meant to be Garbo) wearing the freaky paper mache mask, were wildly unnecessary and frankly unpleasant. There were also a number of times where letters or quotes were read by the same voice but it was a conversation between two or more people. It was hard to follow who was supposed to be speaking. The Swedish "journalist" that tried to interview Garbo for decades was very unsettling, and it's never addressed. This man and his group essentially stalked her and then swooped in when she was elderly and vulnerable. The entirety of the documentary was based on the fact that she hated the attention that her fame attracted and yet this journalist man was almost part of the narrative.

The actual documentary portiona of the film are excellent. In a huge Garbo devoté and I learned many things about her. But the bizarre and annoying conceit of the blonde wigged woman reading notes and repeatedly uncapping her pen is extremely annoying. Every time she shows up, balancing on her ballet slippers and reading notes im very annoyed!!! Her dialect and accent are so fake I can't stand it. She's completely affected and self aware and performative and it's truly awful. The actual footage is informative and well edited. I cannot imagine what they were thinking weaving the narrative with the wigged waif. Ugh!

The enigmatic Greta Garbo... Here is a new documentary that, with its title, attempts to find answers to where she went after her magnificent film career. The title is somewhat misleading. This documentary covers the entire journey Greta Gustavson aka Greta Garbo made from Sweden to Hollywood, highlights from her career and the reclusive life she lived after the floodlights were turned off. For those of us who know Greta Garbo and have seen/read about her before, nothing new comes out in this one. Nevertheless, the documentary is a must for film lovers. Greta Garbo is one of those figures who is always fascinating. The documentary has lots of clips of her both from film and otherwise.

Watch it if you want to have a reunion with a real film star who came from nothing and who conquered the whole world before she mysteriously withdrew from all publicity.

A few interesting facts and movie clips.

The documentary basically focused on everything we already know about Garbo and did little to delve into the deeper mystique of the woman and give us insight into the Garbo that was out of circulation for 50 years. Additionally, I found these things problematic:

-- The "voice of Greta" reading her letters sounded like a character out of Downton Abbey rather than a shy Swede.... totally misses that low husky sound.

-- There is a woman with a mask that keeps appearing in the film --- with the mask hiding her and then at times giving a glimpse of the real life. I suppose there is symbolism there with the real Garbo hiding from the public... but the mask is so creepy and so distracting, that I had to quit watching and just listen.

-- The actress billed as "the investigator" consistently interrupts at inopportune moments and is perhaps more distracting than the creepy mask.

Overall, not well-produced and a big let down. Don't invest the 90 minutes. You could tune into a TCM Garbo movie and hear a Ben Mankiewicz pre-film summary that would give you the same level of information (and you could actually watch him and not be creeped out).

Only worth seeing for the clips of her silent movies and for the fact that there are so few documentaries on Greta Garbo (the TCM one being far superior to this) but overall this is very much a mixed bag and overall a bit of a mess.

The lumpy paper mache masks used to depict Garbo's head are truly grotesque. A very strange stylistic device for a woman who was universally known as the Divine One and feted for her staggering beauty during her lifetime. Could they have not used still photographs? Ultimately, the repetitive use of these masks throughout becomes a big bore.

Secondly the narration by Noomi Rapace is dull and vocally she sounds far too modern to convey the thoughts of Garbo's in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

The use of 'An Investigator' in a blonde Garboesque wig also adds nothing. A Louella Parsons or Hedda Hopper or even a Walter Winchell type may have been a better choice at representing the Hollywood of the time. Little to no mention of the Garbo mania of the 1930s or of Garbo's private life.

The good things are very few and far between: Some taped phone conversations from Sam Green, who was Garbo's walker; Scott Reisfield, representing Garbo's family; Mimi Pollak's daughter giving her opinion; and an interview snippet of Marlene Dietrich humbly declaring that nobody was Garbo's competitor, implying that no one at that level of fame or success in the 1930s.

Sadly it's a shame this documentary doesn't do Garbo any justice at all.

Garbo: Where Did You Go? Should have been titled Garbo: Where Did the Point Go?

This documentary somehow takes one of the most enigmatic stars of Hollywood's Golden Age and turns her into a dull, meandering mystery with no payoff. It spends nearly an hour trudging through her childhood and early life with barely any coverage of her actual years as a global icon. The decision to use a paper mâché mask on a stand-in Garbo (who looked more like the Jigsaw puppet than the Swedish Sphinx) was mind boggling. Even worse were the bizarre gum-chewing interludes from a blonde woman whispering like she was filming an ASMR video in a Brooklyn loft. When the film finally addresses her retirement in the last 20 minutes, it offers no real insight...just the same tired refrain that she didn't want to be famous anymore.

No notable talking heads, no revelatory commentary, and no reason to watch. After suffering for almost an hour, I fast-forwarded just to get to the part that was supposed to matter-and even that was a letdown. A true waste of time.

And no, this review doesn't contain spoilers. Greta Garbo died when I was a year and a half old. If that's a spoiler, I'd like to speak to your history teacher.

Disappointed. The Garbo mask scenes did nothing for this biography. They were distracting. The narrator was annoying. I'm not sure if she escaped from a mime college to exert her annoyingly stilted lines. I'm also not sure if her hair was supposed to be Garboesque. Made it through half the documentary then put the speed on 1.5. There isn't enough Garbo and there is too much of the mask and the mime. Garbo was alive when I was a kid. She'd show up in a news shot or film on occasion. So she didn't disappear. She out right stated she'd had it with Hollywood. Better to watch a film like Ninotchka to see how Garbo shone.

I love documentaries and was so excited to watch this and learn more about Garbo. This was extremely boring and provided mostly surface level information. More time was spent showing an actor holding a weird fake head in front of her own or flipping through papers than clips of Garbo. And yes, I understood the point of the fake head, I just found it an unnecessary waste of time. The film would touch on something quite briefly but wouldn't explore it deeper and would quickly move on. It left me constantly hoping for more but I was disappointed each time. Surely there is more information out there about a fascinating person like Garbo. Don't waste your time.

The people who were interviewed and the archived footage regarding Garbo were great. The use of the paper mache mask were creepy and unnecessary. Also unnerving was the platinum blonde actress who chewed through every seen she was in. Her acting was way over the top, and did nothing for the film. It appeared as though this documentary was the first professional job for the blonde and she wanted to make a good impression. She failed miserably.

I stopped watching about 3/4 of the way through the film because I couldn't take the mask and the platinum blonde anymore. I wish the film had been solely archival footage and interviews.

It starts off with a ridiculous statement which says that "why she quit acting and where she went are a mystery to this day...." which was completely untrue. Everyone knows she lived in New York City and walked a lot. People saw her all over the city for years and years. Why she quit has also been well documented. So this slow moving, poorly narrated, idiotically stylized documentary teaches us nothing. Why is that woman in the blond wig reading papers while someone who sounds like Madonna using her fake British accent does a voice over? Why are the creepy papier machet masks necessary-symbolism? Wow, that's a high school play level plot device. The whole thing was off-putting, cringy, shallow and took away from the only decent parts, which was the interviews with people who knew her.

Extremely strange.

The first weirdness is right off the bat. It kicks off with voice over over images of Greta as a burn victim, but then the burned face begins to be come off of her head!...it seems to be a mask??

It's really odd.

Then she cuts to this woman in a confusing wig, who pretends to be reading pretend letters or documents. The wig was odd. It fell short of Marilyn Monroe but also wasn't anyone else. The actress wore a black turtle neck and black Pants, and sat at a pretend desk. She would (badly) act as if she were reading out loud these mystery papers but in a campy way-very confusing. I find it hard to believe she was trying to actually act like she was reading. It was maybe trying to be stylized?? She would then have some sort of reflection like "hm, she is very determined at this time" and then She'd look off and pretend She was getting an idea and pick up a pen and pretend to Write it down. It was fascinating!

Then there would be some (thank goodness!) images or footage of Garbo.

It would then get even more puzzling by cutting To that burned victim Garbo mask and now The actress would be sitting and holding it at varying distances from her face so sometimes there were two faces. They would zoom in tight on the burned Greta mask and its Fake eyes and then Out again as the actress would move it around and pretend to write sometimes ...super duper puzzling so much so that I would totally miss the voice over that was someone's letter about Garbo that I am sure would have been interesting to hear.

Sometimes the lady in the weird wig would be inside an old TV set! That was next to the fake desk, pretending to be ...I'm not sure...maybe a reporter?

Oh, one time pretending to read a letter at the pretend desk the author was describing Greta's transformation and said greta changed her hair or something like that and also that She lost weight and the Lady in the wig pretended to make an aside comment about that and i Believe she said, "so gross".

It was as if it was a weird parody.

Another time she did this back and forth Robotic pacing while pretending to read.

I was watching it on an airplane or I would have turned it off. Instead I would look away during the strange little skits.

Truly hit the miss of whatever she was trying to do, of which I have no idea.

Nothing on her lesbian crushes or relationships in NYC.

Her last unwitting film performance in Peter De Rome's artful gay porn movie, Adam and Yves in 1974 makes a brief apperance but no mention of the movie itself. Instead her NYC queer friends are presented as ultimatly disloyal and exploitative.

An apparent need to strighten the narrative seems unnecessary, resemebling the kind of closeted biography making that used to occur before the 1990s.

The director seemed unresolvedly torn between celebrating the cause celebe of an icon or revealing the person beneath and in the end the latter is side-stepped and compromised in favour of retaining an enigma. But for what ?

In other words: drivel, struggling to be interesting and avant-garde. Andy Warhol is barfing within his grave.

Only Ms. Daniels succeeds in her self-portrayal of a wooden, monosyllabic and otherwise challenged automaton. The director and screenwriter should be disemboweled and henceforth limited to working on acne retardant soap commercials. Editing is reminiscent of doomed adolescent poetry. Art and light production is cavernous, distracting and stupid. Costuming is reminiscent of the Adams Family television series. In short, the work is lowbrow, and not worth the time required to hate it.

Then again, maybe the film was meant to be a satire . . .

I'm not sure what the producers and writers of this awful documentary about an iconic actress had in mind, but shame on Lorna Tucker and everyone else associated with this piece of garbage. It should have been far better given the subject. First of all, what was the meaning of that hideous mask that was worn throughout the film?. It was totally unnecessary and helped torpedo this piece of junk. Secondly, who was the tall blonde woman who also was a superfluous character? Both were irrelevant. Their theatrics were totally unnecessary. As a result, there was less of Garbo and more of the histrionics. Some of the guests were good, but some not so much. There should have been subtitles for one of them. I could barely understand a word he said. Greta Garbo's life story deserved a much better treatment than Lorna Tucker, et al, gave her.

I love ant documentary I can find on classic Hollywood stars. The actual interviews, letters, and archival photos here are quite interesting for a classic movie fan. But this film tries way too hard to be artistic, with these ridiculous interstitials with a blonde woman who tries to sound mysterious, and a Garbo lookalike who is aged like a haggard Disney movie witch.

And I thought from the premise we would learn more about Garbo's life in retirement. But this didn't offer anything new about that.

Basically it Would have been better as a straight documentary. Just give us the real info!!!!!!!