Garbo Talks (1984)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I can't add too much to the other reviews. We have a devoted son trying to fulfill his mother's wish, and he goes to extremes in order to fulfill it, all the while trying to unknowingly fulfill his own.I saw this film when it was first released, and was just astounded as to its simple form. It was heart warming and heart wrenching all at once, though I didn't feel it at the time, but admired its simplicity in form. This is the kind of film making they simply don't do anymore. The shots are basic, functional, non-energetic, and do their job. No steadicam work, no overhead remote wire work, nor sweeping helicopter shots. And for that matter there's no wit filled dialogue. No excessive use of foul language. No explosions, gunshots nor car chases. No phony and juvenile romantic moments. No fake intimacy. No fabricated outlandish scenarios. No pre-teen raunch jokes and humor. None of that.It's the way movies used to be. The movie going audience was different back then. More mature. More adult. More willing to behave themselves and take life seriously but also acknowledge a time and place to have fun. They were also smarter when it came to the human condition. They weren't raised on fast food cinema with superheros gallivanting around CGI worlds. It was a different time. A different place. It's what going to the movies used to be like.And that's who this film is for. For those people, the movie audience of yesterday, who didn't mind taking in a matinée to see a romance or detective story on the screen. The kind of movie goer who wasn't waiting to be wowed by the next big breakthrough in special effects, CGI and other technical wizardry. They went for the actors and story.And those are the kind of films Greta Garbo was in. Oh sure, she was beautiful to be sure, but she was also an actress with reclusive tendencies--a quirk that made her legendary among her comeliness and presence on screen. People thought she was beautiful, and then her natural character was captured via lens and film to relay to the movie going audience of the 30s and 40s. People fell in love with her, her characters, her performances, and her films.In this film we bring all those elements together to form a compound for the classic movie lover who lived in the 80s. For anyone who loves their mother, for anyone who loves classic films, for anyone with a misled faith in Hollywood endings, such as I and many others, this film is for you.I haven't seen it since it was first released. And it was a pleasure to see it again.Check it out.

There is hardly a difference in the approach that the estimable Anne Bancroft takes as the incorrigible Estelle Rolfe in this sentimental 1984 comedy versus what she did three years later as the equally feisty Helene Hanff in David Jones' "84 Charing Cross Road". Somehow, this fine actress can take what may appear to be a caricature on paper and infuse it with her special blend of warmth and moxie to make the characters come alive. Just as it was Helene's love of antiquarian books that drove the story of the later film, it is Esther's adoration of screen legend Greta Garbo that drives this movie. Perpetually jailed for her overzealous liberal activism, Esther discovers she has a malignant brain tumor and asks her son Gilbert to help her fulfill her last wish - to meet Garbo.The movie focuses on Gilbert's relentless search for the reclusive actress, while confronting his marital problems and developing a burgeoning interest in a struggling actress. As a director hardly known for his deftness with comedy, Sidney Lumet guides this talky venture with a melancholy lugubriousness that makes it feel longer than its 103-minute running time. Written by TV-movie writer Larry Grusin, the story plods along with Gilbert meeting several eccentric characters along the way - a bedraggled paparazzo in pursuit of Garbo for years (Howard Da Silva in his final role), his lunatic cat-lady agent (Broadway veteran Dorothy Loudon), a senile actress who worked with Garbo once (Hermoine Gingold in her final role), and a lonely gay man on the Fire Island ferry (Harvey Fierstein who overplays the tear-jerking aspect of his cameo).Garbo (who would have been nearly eighty at the time of filming) does finally show up in the story - sort of - from the back and is embodied by legendary Broadway songwriter Betty Comden. This gives rise to a nicely performed monologue scene with Bancroft. There is another good one with Steven Hill, who plays Estelle's frustrated ex-husband. It would have been absurd to expect the real Garbo to show up, but one can't help but have a glimmer of hope throughout that it could have happened. Ron Silver plays Gilbert sympathetically if rather too glumly to maintain interest in his character's plight. As the aspiring actress, Catherine Hicks ("Seventh Heaven") pops in and out of the story to twinkle and inspire Gilbert. Just finished with the "Star Wars" trilogy, Carrie Fisher effectively plays an entirely different princess as Gilbert's wife Lisa, the Long Island variety by way of California. The 2004 DVD offers no extras.

A painfully protracted, maudlin and predictable drama, my twenty-fifth Sidney Lumet film, Garbo Talks, gets filed precipitously on the low quality end of my quest.The film documents a harried young working man named Gilbert (Ron Silver), who is son to Estelle Rolle (Anne Bancroft), eccentric, feisty and above all, an obsessive fan of Greta Garbo. When Estelle becomes afflicted with a brain tumor, her son decides to go on an obsessive quest of his own: track down Greta Garbo, and bring her to his mother.Anne Bancroft is in full-on, chew-the-scenery Auntie-Mame mode here, that kind of feisty ol' gal that film loves, where she mouths off to people, and stands up for her ideals, and ends up in jail all the time. She stands outside of the film as an obvious artificial construct, and every scene with her is yuk-yuk lame; every note striking false. The rest of the characters are equally as one-dimensional, but tremendously less-interesting. Ron Silver is flat as can be, and his attempted love triangle is as telegraphed as anything else in the film: He is dating affluent Lisa Rolfe (Carrie Fisher), but becomes smitten with oddball co-worker Jane Mortimer (Catherine Hicks), and I called every scene three scenes before they happen.That's the other problem. One-dimensional characters can survive if they are posited in an intriguing and captivating story, but there's simply nothing here. The film's pace is glacial, resplendent with extraneous material that strengthens absolutely nothing, and when the film does begin to follow a linear plot, it's both plodding and uninteresting. There are plenty of guest stars, so to speak, including Harvey Fierstein as a gay New Yorker (imagine that) in yet another highly inessential scene.Late in the film, it attempts to make a halfway-decent statement on the nature of idolatry and its role in our lives, but by that time, none of the characters exist as real people, and the film had bored me into submission, so it functions as a case of far-too-little, far-too-late. The film is my twenty-fifth Lumet-directed film, making him easily my most-viewed director, but outside of a couple egregious misses (A Stranger Among Us, anyone?), he hasn't plumbed the painfully uninteresting depths of Garbo Talks.{Grade: 4.5/10 (C/C-) / #21 (of 24) of 1984 / #23 of 25 Lumet films}

It is the mere presence of the late Anne Bancroft in GRABO TALKS that keeps the film from being totally intolerable. This rather silly 1984 comedy is about a dying woman (Bancroft)whose dying wish is to meet Greta Garbo, the actress of whom she has a lifelong obsession and knows everything about. This dying wish sends her son (Ron Silver) on a journey to make this wish come true for his mother. It's kind of interesting watching Silver do the detective work required to find a recluse like Garbo but it is lovely to see the lengths the guy goes to in order to fulfill his mother's dying wish. Some talented veterans are seen to good advantage in supporting bits including Steven Hill, Howard Da Silva, Hermione Gingold, Adolph Green, Dorothy Loudon, and Richard B. Shull, but it is Bancroft who really makes this film worth watching. I love the scenes of her laying in her bed talking about Garbo's career and sharing intimate details with her son about Garbo's movies and life. This kind of material would have been maudlin and sappy in the hands of other actresses, but Bancroft makes this material sing and makes this movie worth watching. BTW, that is legendary screenwriter Betty Comden appearing at the end of the movie as Garbo.