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BY NORBERT LUSK, EDITOR
THE only great actress of the screen is Garbo. Ever) other talent is mumi, She is of the ether, the stars and the moon, the sea and the sky. She is poetry, music, the still, small voice in the heart of man: she is more than mortal whet! she acts. You have seen, or soon will see, all this in "Conquest." Seeing, feeling, your mind in flower and your senses ravished, you will forget never a divine woman and the reverence we give her.
Garbo and Charles Boyer divide honors equally in "Conquest," but hers is the more difficult role.
|-|OLLYWOOD. still stunned by Barbara Stanwyk's stunt in "Stella Dallas," is quick to assert that Charles Boyer dominates "Conquest" and steals the picture from Garbo. That is no more true than was the disco\er\ h\ Hollywood of Marie Dressler's theft of "Anna Christie" from Garbo. By such evaluation, an) one who gives a conspicuous performance in a Garbo picture always surpasses Garbo: it is Hollywood's belief that she cannot act at all! The world outside the barricade knows
otherwise.
"Conquest" is a magnificent picture but not a gre; one. It is the actors who give it moments of splendor. Lasting two hours, it has passages that seem forced, scenes that could be spared, but it i always a superb spectacle, and moving drama sometimes. The chief characters are Napoleon Bonaparte and the Polish Countess Marie U aleiesLa. who rendered herself to him to preserve her country's independence. Historical fact is blown up to yield a passionate, undivided love, the picture ending with Marie and their son bidding Bonaparte farewell as he is tricked into boarding a British frigate to spend the rest of his life in exile. So much for the story.
AAR. BOYER has great advantage in playing Napoleon. His characterization is strengthened by tradition and public consciousness, and he i-^ himself French. Ever) schoolboy has hi idea of what the Corsican was like. Few have ever heard of Count Walewski's wife. Historians skip her. It is the dramatists that found her out. Therefore. Garbo has only herself to draw upon, only her sorcer) to create a woman of exquisite feeling, of such warm flesh and blood that words given her by the writers of the screen play have the rhythm of music, the poignance of sublime poetry. "I shall never long for spring again, " she savs. know ing that only winter keep Napoleon with her. "You gave me more than love — you gave me life," she murmurs in his arms, and it i as if violin and (■ spoke in woman's triumphant acknowledgment of all she owes to man. tl would give m\ ear to hear Garbo read Shakespeare.)
MOW, it does not follow that Mr. Boyer is less than a perfect \apoleon. He is imperious, cunning, simple, weary, passionate — any and everything that entered into the self of the man of destiny as we know him a century after he lived. Nor is