Instrumentation

3(II=picc).2(II=ca).3(III=Eb/bcl).2(II=cbsn) - 4331 - timp - perc(3) - pno(=cel) - harp - strings (mm 10.8.6.6.4)

Availability

Score and parts for hire

Programme Notes

Starring: Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson
Director: Victor Seastrom
Production company: MGM USA, 1928
Duration: 9 minutes
Film Print: 35mm B&W print available from Photoplay Productions (Film Speed: 24 frames per second)

This 9-minute fragment from Greta Garbo's famous 'lost' film was discovered in 1995, in a Moscow archive, by the Swedish film historian Bo Berglund. Berglund immediately recognised that the scene, from early in the film, can stand alone. In it the heroine Marianne, played here by an uncharacteristically extrovert Garbo, is entertaining her lover Lucien, a French Foreign Legionnaire. Carmen-like, she persuades him to stay the night with her rather than report for duty. Telling close-ups of Lucien show that he is doomed.
Davis's score makes use of the French legionnaires' 'March of the Foreign Legion'. The scene makes an ideal 'opener', in particular for Flesh and the Devil for which the scoring is the same.

Scene from The Divine Woman

Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre (London, United Kingdom)

Carl Davis CBE/Philharmonia Orchestra

Scene from The Divine Woman

The Midland Theatre (Newark, OH, USA)

Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra/Timothy Weiss

Scene from The Divine Woman

Konserthuset (Göteborg, Sweden)

Carl Davis CBE/Göteborgs Symfoniker

Scene from The Divine Woman

Konserthuset (Göteborg, Sweden)

Carl Davis CBE/Göteborgs Symfoniker

Scene from The Divine Woman

No Venue (Örebro, Sweden)

Svenska Kammarorkestern