VIKING CHILD: The Enigma of Greta Garbo

Note: This article first appeared in ALVAR Magazine, 2015.

If our current appetite for movies has settled on a high-octane stream of global spectacle, it may sound antique to bring up film historian David Thomson’s lo-tech observation: The most special effect in movies is always the human face when its mind is being changed. Forget the roaring balls-to-the-wall CGI climax, larger-than-life…