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And she did, in the most improbable of circumstances. She could be a convincing "older woman," older than Eve, when barely out of her teens. She could find temporary haven in the spindly arms of any callow leading man MGM cast opposite her, or in the mature embrace of a Gilbert or John Barrymore. She could play vibrant love scenes with just a vase of flowers (A Woman of Affairs) or bedroom furniture (Queen Christina). She could suggest regal exhaustion with the minutest shift in posture, then fling an extravagant gesture at the movie audience, daring it to laugh. She could laugh at herself too, as in Ernst Lubitsch's delicious Ninotchka (1939). When asked, "Do you want to be alone, Comrade?" she snaps back, "No!"
She was alone, in an acting empyrean, in George Cukor's 1937 Camille. As the selfless courtesan Marguerite Gautier, Garbo transforms her face into a life- and-death mask, and Dumas's melodrama into classical tragedy. Every calculated audacity -- the hint of disintegration in the eyes, the dry little laugh exploding into a tubercular cough, the weight of a thoughtful passion that gives substance to every line of dialogue -- testifies to Garbo's acute, intuitive knowledge of screen acting, and it allows her to play Marguerite at high pitch and with perfect precision. At the end, as she dies reconciled with her lover, she is both a helpless child and a hoarse old woman, whispering pleas and forgiveness. No other actress could create such a performance, or get away with it.
In Two-Faced Woman, Garbo exits a cocktail party and says brightly, "I look forward to my return." She never did return; this amiable 1941 comedy was her last film. For years she was reported to be mulling beguiling projects (on the lives of St. Teresa of Avila, Eleanora Duse, Dorian Gray) from eminent auteurs (Max Ophuls, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles). Eventually, the vacation became permanent, and Garbo's only pictures were those snapped on the fly by avid paparazzi. Now the camera was not a lover but a predator. Still, her withdrawal was a good and gracious career move. By refusing to make a comeback film, or star on a nighttime soap, or do a dentures commercial, Garbo kept her image and achievement indelible. She became the discreet curator of her own museum. On the screen of that museum a divine woman is whiplashed by fate, and we, her late-show subjects, sit in awe at the spectacle.