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 INSPIRATION |
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(USA 1931)
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| ALTERNATE TITLE | ||
Yvonne (GERMANY)
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| FILM SCENES | ||
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| COMPANY | ||
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
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| CREDITS | ||
Directed by Clarence Brown.
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| TECHNICAL SPECS | ||
74 minutes
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| CAST | ||
Greta Garbo, Robert Montgomery, Lewis Stone, Marjorie Rambeau, Judith Vosselli, Beryl Mercer, John Miljan, Edwin Maxwell, Oscar Apfel, Joan Marsh, Zelda Sears, Karen Morley, Gwen Lee, Paul McAllister, Arthur Hoyt, Richard Tucker...
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| GARBO'S CHARACTER | ||
Yvonne Valbret
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| FILM POSTER | ||
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| SYNOPSIS | ||
An artist's model, Yvonne (Greta Garbo), falls in love with André (Robert Montgomery), who is studying for consular service. They become lovers, but he is unaware of her former lovers. When he finds out, he leaves her. Later, finding her poverty-stricken, he buys a country place for her. When he tells her that he is to marry another, she pleads with him. Reading of the suicide of one of her friends, Liane (Karen Morley), who killed herself when her lover, Delval (Lewis Stone), left her, André determines to forsake his career for her. He comes to tell Yvonne this and finds one of her former lovers pleading with her to return to him. André says he will forget everything, but when he falls asleep, she writes him a farewell note and leaves, determined not to ruin his life.
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| QUOTES FROM THE FILM | ||
| (in Treatment)
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| MOVIE PROGRAM | ||
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| PREMIERED/RELEASED | ||
Release Date: January 31, 1931
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| LOBBYCARDS | ||
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| PRODUCTION | ||
| Production Dates: October–November 1930
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| MOVIE STILLS | ||
| The Stills were made during the production by Milton Brown. 97 Movie Stills were shot.
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| TRIVIA | ||
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| THE REAL YVONNE VALBRET | ||
| Garbo's character in the film is based on Sappho. She was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. In history and poetry texts, she is sometimes associated with the city of Mytilene on Lesbos (Carson 2002); she was also said to have been born in Eresos, another city on Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured.
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| BACKGROUND STORY | ||
| (in Treatment)
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| BUSINESS DATA | ||
| Budget: 438.000 Dollar.
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| PORTRAITS | ||
Clarence Sinclair Bull made the portraits for the film on December 12, 1930.
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| REVIEWS | ||
Mordaunt Hall for New York Times: |
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Miss Garbo, no matter what may be said of the story, gives a stunning performance as the girl who is the toast of Paris studios.... Miss Garbo endeavours to symbolize Yvonne's mood by different styles of coiffure. In the initial scenes her hair is fluffed up at the sides, and subsequently it has a more subdued aspect. She wears some striking costumes and is virtually the sole subject of interest in this production.
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| Motion Picture: | ||
When Garbo loves she loves like nobody's business. In Inspiration she loves Robert Montgomery to the extent that she is willing to sacrifice her own happiness and her own future to let him have his childhood sweetheart. The ending is Camille without the cough. |
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| Variety: | ||
| Miss Garbo has never looked or played better than in this picture, a suitable assignment. Replete with heavy love stuff, she plays it easily and convincingly, even contributing a sparkling brief bit of light comedy and often helping long passages of awkward dialogue to sound almost real. |
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| Norbert Lusk for Picture Play: | ||
| Handicapped by the material provided for her, Greta Garbo still shines with such brightness that it is only when the picture is well under way that one realizes the weight and dreariness of her burden. For not even the greatest artist maintains effulgence in the murk of a poor picture. That is why laurels for Garbo should be dewed with tears of regret. She makes her heroine sensitive, intelligent, alluring, with a shimmer of laughter like sunshine after an April shower. So superior indeed is Yvonne to the trite circumstances of her story that you feel the player, aware of the disparity, is spurred to greater effort.
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| SIMILAR FILMS | ||
| Sapho - with Mary Marquet (France, 1934)
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| INSPIRATION FAN ART | ||
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| PICTURE FROM THE FILM-SET | ||
More HERE!
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| STORY FROM THE FILM-SET | ||
Garbo did not like her role in Inspiration. She did not like her lines. She did not like the conception of the woman she played. She did not like working in the picture. [Sappho] is now old-fashioned.... A new script had to be written and neither Garbo nor Brown was entirely satisfied with it, but there was nothing to do but experiment on the set and see how it read. In order to get anything out of it they must rehearse and rehearse and change and change. There's where the trouble began. Garbo would not rehearse.... Garbo believed that she knew more about dialogue and the reading of lines than the producers.... Because she would not learn at home the lines she did not like, the set was turned into a school room. While the other members of the cast ... waited, Garbo was taught her speeches. Said Clarence Brown: "I would not direct Miss Garbo again under the same conditions that prevailed during the last picture."
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| INSPIRATION GOWN | ||
| This Inspiration gown is in an American Museum.
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| THE ORIGINAL PLAY | ||
| Based on the short novel Sappho (1884) by Alphonse Daudet.
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| DVD/VHS | ||
Available on VHS.
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| VIDEO-FILE | ||
See HERE!
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SOURCE |
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Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy – by Mark A. Vieira (Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, New York 2005). This is the best and most accurate book about Garbo's-Films.  |
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OTHER SOURCES |
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Karen Swenson – A life Apart Barry Paris – Garbo IMDB – International Movie Database plus many other books, magazines and internet sites. |
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Film - Introduction |
© Copyright 2005 – www.GarboForever.com – Germany – TJ & John – The Webmasters
Inspiration was Garbo's sixteenth film.
