How others will see it. The costumed love story comes complete with a predictable tearjerker ending, and is Taylor-made for a female audience. As with Garbo's turn as Anna Karenina, the audience must work up support for her fallen woman character. Anna Karenina worked better, however, because the source novel was superior, so the story doesn't seem as fabricated.
How I felt about it. How many people watching Garbo will realize, or care, what a huge star she was at the time, and that she was one of the few stars to succeed in both the silent and sound eras? Classic film fans know about her, of course, but her placid beauty seems more conventional than alluring in today's more flashy and less civilized culture.
Garbo is suitable for Marguerite because she is charming enough to be convincing as a charmer. A woman who understands the world, she knows that her use of men is wrong, but if the pleasure is mutual and the extravagent bills are paid, then, where is the harm?
This contented world of false friends and pleasure is threatened not only by her frail health, but by the presence of Robert Taylor, who promises unfathomable romantic love but cannot pay for her frilly hats.
Taylor is credible as both the lovesick hero and the jealous fool, which makes his casting also appropriate if not perfect. Henry Daniell, again appearing to play a character with interminable constipation, is both menacing and surprisingly perceptive.
Camille was a subject ideal for George Cukor, a director well known for making films that appeal to women. The problem, to the degree that there is one, is with the story. The idea that Garbo would reject her lover so as not to deny his career... it's doubtful that she would care about his career, and both would take pleasure from his 'sacrifice,' which amounts to exchanging tedious diplomatic formalities for evenings and nights with his delightful kept prize.