In her memoir printed in 1930 in Lektyr, the magazine published in Stockholm by her friend Lars Saxon, she described her technique in several sentences: "I live the part I am playing. I am completely under its spell, so that if anyone tries to speak to me or ask me questions, it wakes me up, so to speak." She followed the advice of both Delsarte and Stanislavski that actors should internalize a role until it becomes part of themselves. Mercedes thought that the characters Garbo played possessed her. The acclaimed directors Rouben Mamoulian and George Cukor agreed. Both said that her acting was intuitive; Mamoulian called it "a divine gift." (Mamoulian directed her in Queen Christina; Cukor in Ninotchka and Two-Faced Woman.)
But she prepared carefully for each role. She read books that provided context. Given her photographic memory, she memorized not only her own lines but also the lines of all the other actors. She practiced movements and gestures to find the ones she wanted to use. The producer Sam Marx saw her walking in the alley behind his office at MGM before filming began on Grand Hotel. She was pacing back and forth, varying her steps in speed and rhythm. Marx realized that she was figuring out how the ballerina she was playing in Grand Hotel should move.
In describing Garbo's acting, director Clarence Brown stressed the brilliance of her eyes. "She had something behind the eyes that you couldn't see until you photographed her in close-up. If she had to look at one person with jealousy, and another with love, she didn't have to change her expression. No other screen actress has been able to do that on film." The number of close-ups given to an actress in her films was considered a measure of her stardom; no other Hollywood actress in Garbo's era reached her total.
Critics of Garboās acting charged that she was a somnambulistāthat she sleepwalked through her filmsāwhich was characteristic of actresses in German expressionist films, which often were set in a dream landscape.
(Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo)
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