Garbo, formerly Greta Gustafsson, captured European audiences in a leading role for the first time earlier that spring, in Mauritz Stiller\u2019s The Saga of Gosta Berling. <\/em>Next came a meeting with Louis B. Mayer, who signed her\u2014and Stiller\u2014 to a contract with his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and brought them to Hollywood in 1925. As Garbo sailed to the United States that summer, the Hollywood Daily Citizen <\/em>reported on the woman \u201csaid to be the most beautiful and accomplished young actress of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMiss Garbo,\u201d the paper predicted, \u201cis scheduled for stardom.\u201d Few prophecies have been better realized than this anonymous bit of page-five news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the history of movies, and indeed of celebrity writ larger, few stars were more starlike than Garbo. Theorists of film stardom remain fascinated by her: a singular on-screen presence, the way she reflected and informed the zeitgeist, and, in the case of early critics like Rolan Barthes, her face as depicted through the chemical and mechanical processes of film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The levers of Hollywood naturally launched Garbo to new levels of global stardom, especially following Clarence Brown\u2019s Flesh and the Devil <\/em>(1926), the film credited with making her an international force of the motion picture screen. But that film was the last of three produced under the auspices of MGM\u2019s \u201cboy wonder<\/a>,\u201d the 26-year-old Irving Thalberg. Up first, on February 21, 1926, was Torrent.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on a novella by the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez, Torrent <\/em>features Garbo as Leonora, a peasant girl in love with Don Rafael Brull (Ricardo Cortez), a nobleman and son of her landlord, Dona Bernarda (Martha Mattox). Our first introduction to Garbo comes in medium shot: she kneels before a well, praying that Don Rafael will pass her by. She sings to the birds, her eyes finding them on a nearby branch, playfully calling out to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To watch Garbo is to understand what Hitchcock meant he called silent movies the purest form of cinema. Each glance and movement seems to convey something about the complexities of Garbo\u2019s character: the pleasure she feels to be in love in this cozy home with Don Rafael, and the sense that perhaps there is something greater out there, something that can only be obtained by following the birds wherever they go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Leonora and her family sit down for dinner, Dona Bernada knocks at the door. Perhaps as retribution for her son\u2019s romance with their daughter, or maybe out of just pure greed, she informs the aged parents that they will need to leave their home\u2014the bank has ordered it. Unknowing, Leonora and Don Rafael are kissing behind the house: her prayers have been answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, as they kiss, Leonora continues to sneak glances towards the birds. Shot in medium close-up, we in the audience become fixated on her eyes, watching as they peel away from her lover\u2019s face and up towards the skies. Little does she know that she will soon have no choice to flee the home like the birds and make use of her voice to, as one of the film\u2019s intertitles informs us, \u201cbring wealth and ease to her parents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat God for tragedy,\u201d Leonara\u2019s father says. \u201cIt forces us to go forward.\u201d And it does. Leonara makes it as an opera singer in Paris\u2014she returns home by a different name, La Brunna, famous and triumphant. At first resentful, she once again falls for Don Rafael, who is engaged to another woman, after he needlessly risks his life to ensure her safety during the film\u2019s titular flood. But as time passes by, the pair never rekindles, remaining fond for one another in a classic romantic tale of love never again finding its once torrential level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though we watch today with the gift of hindsight, we see how the film\u2014it\u2019s simple trappings and all\u2014lays the foundation for Garbo\u2019s stardom to come. Not only does it mirror her own life trajectory, from growing up poor to entertaining the world, but in her grace and command before the camera. \u201cFrom the moment Torrent<\/em> went into production,\u201d the great Louise Brooks wrote in her memoir<\/a> decades later, \u201cno contemporary actress was ever again to be quite happy in herself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many first films, the studios are trying to sell you a star. It\u2019s true in Hollywood today. But here, the film is not selling a star; it is simply capturing one who already is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Torrent” is streaming on Amazon Prime<\/a>, Tubi<\/a>, and Hoopla<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/torrent2-1024x780.jpg\")
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