Two-Faced Woman (1941)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

the audience applauded

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

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.

TWO-FACED WOMAN (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1941), directed by George Cukor, stars Greta Garbo in her second American comedy that was to become her final motion picture screen appearance. Working opposite again with Melvyn Douglas, her co-star in the now classic comedy, NINOTCHKA (1939), TWO FACED WOMAN, by comparison, is often labeled a disappointment. Disappointment as it may be, it's still a watchable item due to it being the only opportunity to see the dramatic Garbo skiing, swimming, laughing, cigarette smoking, getting tipsy with champagne, and having the time of her life doing a Rumba type dance, "La Chica Chaca." Aside from her forties hairstyle, Garbo also wears an assembly of costumes designed by Adrian. What movie can there be Garbo playing one woman with two different personalities rather than two faces? That's TWO-FACED WOMAN.The plot opens at an Idaho Snow Lodge ("Ski your way to health') where Larry Blake (Melvyn Douglas), an overworked New York magazine publisher, who, at the advise of his doctor, comes for a rest. Almost immediately, he becomes attracted to Karin Borge (Greta Garbo), a ski instructress. Though she shows no interest in having Blake as her only pupil, his mishaps on both ski lift and mountain slopes are enough to have them married before the night is over. Their honeymoon is cut short with the arrival of Larry's executive partner, O.O. Miller (Roland Young), and his secretary, Ruth Ellis (Ruth Gordon), who come to take Larry back with them to New York the next morning to assist them with magazine matters. Because of this, an argument occurs, forcing Larry to leave without Karin, with intentions of returning to her once the assignment is completed. Though they continue to correspond by telegram, Larry's theatrical engagement with former flame and playwright, Griselda Vaughn (Constance Bennett) postpones his return for several more months. Through the arrangements with Miss Ellis, Karin secretly arrives in New York and surprise Larry. She's soon met with a surprise when finding Larry with Griselda at the 43rd Street Theater during rehearsals of her production, "Nostalgia in Chromium," to be more than just business partners. Attempting to flee the theater without being seen, she's then spotted by O.O.Miller but "introduced" to him by Miss Ellis as Mrs. Blake's twin sister, Kathryn. As the fictitious carefree twin sister, Karin assumes her masquerade by putting her husband to the test.Reportedly a modern reworking to an old silent comedy, HER SISTER FROM Paris (First National, 1925) starring Constance Talmadge and Ronald Colman, this latest edition proved nothing new to audiences of 1941, with the exception of Garbo assuming the sort of role expected by possibly Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard or Katharine Hepburn to enact. While this was intended to be a welcome change for Garbo fans, it proved otherwise. Interestingly, this premise of deceit had already been done earlier, to a better degree, under Preston Sturges' amiable direction of THE LADY EVE (Paramount, 1941) starring Barbara Stanwyck playing look-alike characters to confuse and win back the man she loves (Henry Fonda). With the exception of the ski sloping finale that mirrors that of Abbott and Costello's 1943 comedy, HIT THE ICE (Universal), and Constance Bennett's hilarious shrieking bits, TWO-FACED WOMAN offers little cleverness and witty one-liners that had THE LADY EVE work out so well. Having the serious-minded Karin marry a complete stranger hours after their initial meeting seems out of character for Garbo. Script revision depicting her and Larry as a divorced couple remarrying and giving their marriage another try might have been better suited. The Douglas character is more on a two-faced level here, showing great interest in his new bride one moment and growing tired of her the next. He's first romantic, then domineering and critical the next, the latter that doesn't go well with any independent woman. Miss Ellis sums it up well by saying, "They're in love!" Without these marital mishaps, there could never be any situations leading to Karin's fictional gold-digging, man-chasing twin sister to liven things up. Though portions of this comedy misses the mark, it does have Garbo leaving the motion picture screen not in traditional tears, but with good humorous fun. Also look for the young Robert Sterling in this production.Distributed to home video in the 1990s, TWO-FACED WOMAN often plays on Turner Classic Movies, home of the MGM film library, and those starring the legendary Greta Garbo. La Chica Chaca. (***)

Disappointing 1941 film with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in the leads. Constance Bennett is given little to do and the one surprise in the film is how rather pretty Ruth Gordon looked. This came a year after her memorable turn with Raymond Massey in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois."The story is rather routine here. In one swirl, editor Douglas marries ski instructor Garbo, but when Garbo comes to N.Y. to surprise him, she is not happy to see him around Constance Bennett. To top matters, his partner sees Garbo as she is fleeing before Douglas sees her. To the rescue comes Douglas's faithful secretary, Ruth Ellis, played with charm and wit by Ruth Gordon. She invents the story that he saw her twin. Soon aware of this facade, the rest of the film is devoted to Garbo and Douglas playing off on each other. The "twin" forces Garbo to be the woman she really isn't and this just goes on and on.

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...