12/09/2005

Greta Gustafsson, better known as Greta Garbo, whose 100th birthday would have been next Sunday 18 September, is being celebrated around the world, and in particular in her native country Sweden, with a major programme of events organised by the Swedish Film Institute.

On Friday September 16, the celebration of ‘The Divine’ will start with a new release of George Cukor’s Camille, 68 years after the original premiere at Stockholm’s famous cinema, the Röda Kvarn. On Sunday 18, the silent film Gösta Berling’s Saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling) screening at Stockholm’s Film House will be accompanied live by music composer Matti Bye who himself, will play his newly-written score on the piano with a string quartet. Mauritz Stiller’s film will open a major Garbo retrospective at the Film House including 13 of her films such as her first Hollywood film, the seldom screened Virveln (The Torrent) (1926) as well as those that made her a real international star: George Fitzmaurice’s Mata Hari (1931), Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina (1933), Clarence Brown’s Anna Karenina (1935) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939).

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An exhibition called ‘Images of Greta’ at Stockholm’s Sture Cinema will showcase a number of previously unpublished photos from the Film Institute’s image bank, also available on line, and a number of Garbo-related objects from the Institute’s collections will also be on display at the Film House such as a dress she wore in Gösta Berling’s Saga, some of her private letters, and her notebook from the Royal Dramatic Theatre Drama School.