Camille 1936 - Garbo's greatest triumph on screen

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028683/
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan

"Camille is one of the most romantically-atmospheric films ever made. It is a tearjerker classic - a well-known, lavish, luxuriously-mounted, melodramatic love/tragedy of Hollywood's Golden Age. Director George Cukor's film, his first with Greta Garbo, was also the first talking version of the content. It was adapted by Zoe Akins, Frances Marion, and James Hilton from Alexandre Dumas Fils' 1852 novel/play (La Dame aux Camelias) of the doomed romance of a tubercular courtesan/demimonde of ill repute in 19th century Paris.
Camille is also among MGM's most lavish productions of the 1930s, and features what many critics consider to be Greta Garbo's greatest film performance. Garbo's portrayal of the beautiful but sickly Parisian courtesan, who fatefully falls in love with a young French nobleman (25 year-old Robert Taylor), is widely considered the definitive version of the Camille story. Among the last of the projects overseen by studio production chief Irving Thalbeerg, (who died shortly before filming ended) the film boasted MGM's customary collection of behind-the-camera all-stars, including director George Cukor, whose patient attention to Garbo helped her to find just the right tone for her role. The supporting cast is similarly solid, highlighted by standouts Henry Daniell and Laura Hope Crews. They help to deflect attention from the film's weaker scenes, most of which involve Lionel Barrymore as the father of the frustrated suitor (Taylor). Despite spending the latter part of the film succumbing to illness, Garbo looks radiant, thanks to her Adrian gowns and William Daniels' loving cinematography.
Cukor - who had already directed the classic Dinner at eight (1933), and would go on to make further screen greats such as The Philadelphia story 1940 and My fair lady 1964 - captured the most exquisite, poetic, restrained performance of the great screen actress. In her most popular and luminous film, Garbo was recognized for her performance with the film's sole Academy Award nomination, but she lost to Luise Rainer who won for another, heavily-promoted MGM classic, The Good Earth."

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