Camille

(Usa, 1936)

«Thalberg knew Garbo well – he was the one who created and moulded her American career – and not long before dying, he saw the rushes of the scene in the theatre where she is simply sitting on the stage. He said: “She has never been so exceptional”. And I replied: “But Irving, how can you say that? She’s simply sitting there”. And he said: “I know, but she is so defenceless”».

In Paris, Armand Duval falls in love with Margherita Gautier, known as Camille. A woman with a terrible reputation, Camille seems to want to leave her past behind her for her new love, but Armand’s father implores her to leave his son for his own good. And so Camille pretends that she has another man so that Armand will leave her.  The truth will come out later, when Camille discovers she is dying of tuberculosis, and Armand is only able to reach her when she is on her deathbed.

One of the most famous versions of Alexandre Dumas fils’ La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias), not to mention perhaps Greta Garbo’s greatest screen performance: with a perfect balance between reason and emotion. She received an Oscar nomination in the year that Luise Rainer won it for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld.

George Cukor (New York, 1899 - Los Angeles, 1983) was born into a well-off family of Jewish Hungarian origin. He began his professional life in the theatre as an assistant director. With the advent of talking pictures he was among the numerous Broadway personalities to whom Hollywood turned, convinced that directing dialogue required theatrical competence. His first contract was with Paramount, for whom he organized the mise-en-scene of several comedies. His meeting with David O. Selznick provided a fundamental turning point: Selznick introduced him first to RKO and then to MGM for whom he made some of his most famous films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Adam’s Rib (1949). Not to be forgotten during this period of his career was his participation in the colossal Gone with the Wind (1939), for which Cukor – later replaced by Fleming for reasons which have never been made clear – was Selznick’s first choice. During this intensely active phase in his career came his meeting with Katharine Hepburn, with whom he began a long-running association through a series of films, including Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), Pat and Mike (1952). A director who was particularly interested in the female mind, Cukor directed some of Hollywood’s greatest stars, such as Greta Garbo (Camille, 1936) and Joan Crawford (A Woman’s Face, 1941), but also Ingrid Bergman (Gaslight, 1944), Judy Garland (A Star is Born, 1954) and Marilyn Monroe (Let’s Make Love, 1960), to the extent that he won the accolade “women’s director”. During the course of his prolific and highly successful career (his last film, Rich and Famous, was made in 1981), Cukor only won one Oscar, for My Fair Lady in 1964.