Cinema, Art Deco, and Greta Garbo as Deco Icon in the 1920s
Online via Zoom
This talk will briefly summarize the tenets of the Art Deco design movement and discuss how it influenced every aspect of film culture in the 1920s including set, costume, poster, and theater design. It will then concentrate on the star persona of Greta Garbo in the 1920s, and how she became (what the instructor has deemed) a “Deco icon” through her film roles, onscreen “look,” and off-screen reputation as an unconventional “New Woman.” The talk will be copiously illustrated with film stills, other images, and excerpts from three 1920s Garbo films: The Torrent, The Single Standard, and The Kiss.
Lucy Fischer is a Distinguished Professor, Emerita, of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh where she directed the Film Studies Program for thirty years. She is the author of fifteen books on film and film history. She has held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), and has been the recipient of both a National Endowment for the Arts Art Critics Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Professors. In 2016, she received the Chancellor’s Research Award for Senior Scholars and in 2017 the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring at the University of Pittsburgh. Fischer frequently teaches for OLLI at Pitt.