This was Greta Garbo's last film, released in early 1942, co-starring Melvin Douglas. I viewed it this afternoon on DVD from a recent airing on TCM.We open with Douglas as Larry Blake, magazine publisher, vacationing at an Idaho ski lodge, telling the lodge manager that he has no interest at all in skiing. Seeing, Garbo, as Karin Borg, skiing expertly right outside the window, he decides, upon hearing she is a ski instructor, to pay for private lessons, taking her immediately away from a class of several she was teaching. He annoys her by immediately suggesting they go someplace private—letting it be clear that he is interested in anything other than skiing.Karin's response is to take him to the top of the mountain, which is something I believe few ski instructors would do because a novice on a really steep slope would be extremely dangerous. After getting off the chair lift, he almost immediately starts going down backwards and falls over a ridge and we see skis and legs sticking out from a pile of snow beneath the edge of the ridge.The next scene has two of Larry's colleagues, O.O. Miller (Roland Young) and Miss Ruth Ellis (Ruth Gordon) rushing to the lodge, worried about their missing boss. Then we see Larry entering a private cabin with Karin and learn they are newly married. Larry says he plans to immediately retire and stay there with Karin, living a simple life. By morning, he's changed his mind no fewer than three times, and leaves his new wife to return to work. She resisted his orders to go with him, as that isn't what they agreed to. To me, this proves why it is unwise to marry someone you don't even know.After many weeks of broken plans for him to come back to her she decides to go to New York and surprise him. But on seeing him friendly with an old girlfriend, Griselda (Constance Bennett) Karin decides to go back to Idaho without seeing him. Spotted by O.O., she goes along with Miss Ellis' concoction and pretends to be her own twin sister, Katherine, a fictional person.She decides her husband needs to be spied on and maneuvers herself to be with him, as she is "dating" O.O. in the role of Katherine Borg. Almost immediately, we see that Larry is at least 90% sure that this is really his wife. Whether he is just flirting with Griselda or having an affair is left uncertain. It is certain that Griselda has romantic plans for Larry.Most of the film settles into this deception mode. Karin, as Katherine, in scenes we never saw, apparently got two suitors, including O.O. believing she they were engaged to her. Mostly she tries to make a play for Larry, wanting him to dislike her "city" ways so he'll go back to Karin. At one point she directly tells him to go to Karin, but he insists he is more interested in her.They wind up back in Idaho and Larry has a terrible time skiing down the mountain, falling and getting up over and over (something only an expert skier could do), as Karin skis down trying to help him stop. He winds up in a lake and suddenly their problems are over as the movie ends.If the review sounds ridiculous, that's the way the movie was. There were few scenes supposed to be funny, but it was too lighthearted to be a good drama. Even a supposed screwball comedy has to have some measure of believability in the script. We were never given anything other than lust to explain why these two got together—they had absolutely nothing in common and we never got any scene, like most "romantic" films where they dated and did something together that made them both laugh together happily. Just—BAM—these strangers are married. And Larry is more interested in his magazine than his wife on his wedding night? For him to go back to New York for a few days to fix a problem is fine. But as shown, it was many weeks he stayed there ignoring her. Annulment time in the real world. No need for a divorce here.What Karin sought to accomplish with her deception is rather dumb as well. She is supposed to make him want to go back to Karin by being a city girl who parties too much and drinks and such. But his world has been the big city and it makes no sense that he would yearn for the new life he, sort of, planned to have with his new bride.This might have worked better if the couple had been married for a few years and she finally talked him into giving up his magazine to retire to the ski lodge, and to help out in a crisis, he went back to the city to rescue the magazine and left her for days or a week, not a couple of months. I know, I'd be changing most of the script, but it needed drastic changing to make a good film. A "4" is a generous score.

While this film is hardly the classic that Ninotchka is, it can be hardly faulted for it, as even Garbo could hardly be expected to top her stellar performance in that great comedy! I was actually quite surprised how good this film is, especially given the volume of negative press it has received through the years. Garbo, even in a slightly lesser effort, is still leagues ahead of most actresses of her day (I find Joan Crawford to be especially overrated!). Besides her forever enigmatic image, she was, perhaps surprisingly, quite adept at comedy. This film actually did very well in its day.The reasons of Two Faced Woman ultimately being Greta Garbo's last film are a bit complicated and multi-faceted. A big reason why she didn't make any films after this one was the especially strong European Box Office returns that her films enjoyed during the 20's and 30's were, with few exceptions stopped dead in their tracks by the coming of the Second World War in 1939. No doubt, the U.S. entry near the end of 1941 also impacted in a number of ways, effectively keeping Greta out of films during the remaining war years.Garbo was actually coming out of retirement in 1949 to do a film for MGM. Sadly, the project got cancelled, and Greta was apparently humiliated by the experience, and didn't wish to be in that position ever again.There are likely other details that I have missed. Suffice it to say, the film itself had nothing to do with Garbo's permanent retirement from film! If you haven't seen Two Faced Woman and get the chance to do so, check it out!

I don't usually make a review after only watching one scene in a movie, but when I watched the dancing scene in you tube I was truly moved and I decided to do it anyway..."Two-Faced Woman" is mostly known for being Garbo's last film and for the bad reviews the stunning actress and the film itself received. However, the scene I just watched, the improvised dance, is that good that made me wanna watch the whole film.Garbo certainly had as much as talent for comedy roles, as much as for dramatic ones. And she really sparkles in this one.I believe the critics of the time were too harsh and too much in a hurry to bury the film, that made the audience turn away from it. I never saw Mrs Garbo that happy, beautiful and feminine in all her films put together. She really proved that she could play a happy-go-lucky woman as easily as she could portrait an ice-cold dynamic Queen or a doomed damsel...I don't remember if The Acedemy honored her with an honorary Oscar, but it they didn't shame on them...

Two Faced Woman became the unexpected swan song for screen legend Greta Garbo. Though her reasons for retirement had to do with the umbrage she took at getting less than stellar reviews for this comedy, still I've always respected that she made her retirement stick for 49 years and kept her legend and image intact.Garbo's a Swedish ski instructor who lands magazine executive Melvyn Douglas on a skiing vacation. But away from the winter wonderland, Garbo's not being quite the wife Douglas expected.Catching Douglas in a compromising position with former flame Constance Bennett, sends Greta on the warpath. She concocts a plan to masquerade as her twin sister, her more glamorous and sexy twin. Suffice it to say, she confuses the rest of the cast for almost the rest of the film.Garbo's playing a role better suited to such comedy veterans as Myrna Loy or Irene Dunne. Still she gets a few laughs in, getting plastered and doing a mean rumba. And she certainly puts Constance Bennett down quite nicely.Still Greta was miscast and the film gets less than stellar reviews from the critics at the time and from me. But the legend lives on.