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As You Desire Me

1932, Movie, NR, 71 mins

As You Desire Me: Review

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A bizarre, always fascinating film with two of the world's most intriguing characters--Garbo and von Stroheim--who square off in histrionic battle. Based on the Luigi Pirandello play, the film offers Garbo as a demi-mondaine who has seen greater days she cannot remember. Her amnesia stems from a violent incident occuring in WW I. At the time she was an Italian countess whose palace was overrun by invading Austrian troops. She is raped by drunken soldiers (similar to the horrific experience undergone by Sophia Loren in TWO WOMEN) and the resultant trauma causes her mind to go blank. She wanders off into the Balkan backwaters only to emerge as a singer in a cheap nightclub. She wears a blonde wig and is adorned in a tight-fitting black cat suit, an outlandish sartorial vamp image undoubtedly designed to spoof the much discussed garb of Marlene Dietrich, who was busy shocking audiences of the era with strangely mannish or next-to-nothing costumes. Garbo's paramour is a cruel-streaked novelist, von Stroheim, a calculating possessive character who makes love to Garbo by whipping her head backwards, holding her in an iron grip, and crushing her lips in the manner of a tank smashing a hedgerow. She responds to him mechanically, accepting her gutter life as if born to it. All this changes when Moore comes into the club and recognizes her; he had painted her wedding portrait years earlier and reminds her of a past she cannot remember. He convinces her to return to her husband, Douglas, who still mourns her disappearance. She leaves the incensed von Stroheim and moves into a world of posh nobility while her husband worshipfully reintroduces her to blueblood society, where she is snubbed. Garbo's life is further complicated when the vengeance-seeking lover, von Stroheim, appears with another woman, insisting that she is really the lost countess and that Garbo is nothing but a scheming impostor. Von Stroheim's claimant is revealed to be a phony and the novelist is sent packing. Garbo remains with her adoring Douglas but she is uncertain at the end whether or not she is indeed his true wife. The film was not a resounding success; audiences of the day were not used to such subtle moralities and problems. (Two decades later audiences responded well to a similar story, ANASTASIA.) The viewer then wanted stories with clearly established heroes and villains; justice had to triumph with a club in its hands. Moreover, the production was rushed on short notice since Garbo's MGM contract was to end 40 days after she had completed GRAND HOTEL earlier that year, and the studio wanted to make the most of its superstar. Though given a lavish production, Garbo resented the studio's greedy race to milk her name into one more film. The ever generous star asked that the man the studio bosses had humiliated years earlier, von Stroheim, appear in the film. When Mayer and Thalberg objected, she insisted and they bowed to her wishes. Von Stroheim's career was at low ebb; he had not directed a film in years and acted in only mediocre productions up to that time. This would be the most distinguished part he would play until making LA GRANDE ILLUSION five years later, but even during the making of AS YOU DESIRE ME the once-great director-actor suffered doubts and fears of failure that left him bedridden. Before these nervous attacks he would phone Garbo at home, telling her that he could not appear on the set in the morning, that he was near collapse. She would then call production chief Thalberg and tell him that she was "indisposed" and could not appear for the next day's shooting, thus heroically protecting her colleague. This Garbo did time and again until von Stroheim's scenes were completed, the kind of marvelous gesture that proved there was a great human being inside a great actress. Almost immediately after the film ended, Garbo went aboard the Swedish liner "Gripsholm" incognito, having already announced that she would never again appear before the cameras. AS YOU DESIRE ME, her 20th film, would be her last, she said. But there would be seven more, among them outstanding triumphs such as QUEEN CHRISTINA, ANNA KARENINA, CAMILLE, and NINOTCHKA, thankfully. leave a comment
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