The summer is starting but the IFI is keeping you inside with another great season of classic cinema scheduled. The second half of their David Lean season is winding down, and coming up next two of cinema’s all-time great divas get their turn in the spotlight. This June, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo are coming to the Irish Film Institute, as it presents the 12-film season Dietrich X Garbo from Sunday June 1 – Sunday 29 June, 2025.
This June the IFI in association with the Goethe-Institut Irland, brings to the big screen films from two of the silver screen’s most influential and imitated performers in Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.
These movie stars are inextricably linked as two of cinema’s most glamorous and era-defining stars. Although their relationship did not have the vitriol of that of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, a certain froideur seems to have existed between Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, despite, or perhaps because of, the numerous similarities in their lives and careers.
From silent films to talkies, from bawdy black and white Berlin to post-Hays code Hollywood, Garbo and Dietrich are stitched in the fabric of film history, and though they claimed to never have met, it’s even been rumoured that they were lovers at one point.
Check out the trailer for this season below and see the IFI’s outline of the 12 films they’ll be showing between the two screen sirens.
GARBO: THE JOYLESS STREET (DIE FREUDLOSE GASSE)
Sun 1st June (15.15)
In impoverished Vienna, following the First World War, Marie (Asta Nielsen) and Grete (Greta Garbo) struggle to survive, forced to use their bodies as barter simply to find food. Pabst’s film marked the beginning of the ‘New Objectivity’ movement, a change from the expressionist mode prevalent in German cinema to one more grounded in the reality of post-war society. It gave Garbo’s nascent career a huge boost, and she credited Nielsen as her acting mentor. For decades, it was claimed, even by Marlene Dietrich herself, that she also appeared in the film, in excised scenes, though the footage remains lost.
DIETRICH: THE BLUE ANGEL (DER BLAUE ENGEL) JOSEF VON STERNBERG
Wed 4th June (18.20)
Germany’s first feature-length sound production, The Blue Angel was Marlene Dietrich’s international breakthrough, and the role that defined her cinematic persona. She is Lola Lola, headliner at the Blue Angel cabaret in Weimar Germany. Local school teacher Immanuel (Emil Jannings) becomes infatuated with her. However, his involvement with her ultimately brings about his ruin. Dietrich’s unforgettable, iconic portrayal of Lola cemented her in public consciousness as the femme fatale, alluring yet distant, irresistible to the men she dominates, and a figure of dangerous glamour.
GARBO: ANNA CHRISTIE, CLARENCE BROWN
Sat 7th June (13.30)
“Garbo Talks!”, the marketing for Anna Christie breathlessly proclaimed, following her rise to stardom over the previous few years in silent films. Like Dietrich, Garbo had concerns over her accent, and held out as long as possible before it became clear that talkies were not just a fad. In the end, her fears were for nothing, as the film was one of the year’s highest grossing, and her performance received an Oscar nomination. In the titular role, she is a young woman with a troubled past who seeks to reconcile with her seaman father and bring stability to her life.
DIETRICH: MOROCCO, JOSEF VON STERNBERG
Sun 8th June (15.20)
The role for which Dietrich received her sole Oscar nomination, Morocco was the first of six American collaborations with director Josef von Sternberg, who came with her from Europe following The Blue Angel. The film that launched her in America sees her as Amy, another nightclub headliner, who falls for a French Legionnaire (Gary Cooper). Their affair is complicated by suitor Adolphe Menjou’s pursuit of her, and his clandestine relationship with the wife of his commanding officer. The film famously features the androgynous Dietrich subverting sexual roles by performing in a tuxedo, and, shockingly, kissing a woman on the lips.
GARBO: GRAND HOTEL, EDMUND GOULDING
THUR 12th June (18.20)
1931 saw the rivalry between the two become more overt with the release of Garbo’s Mata Hari and Dietrich’s Dishonored, in which each played a glamorous international spy, both to great success. But while Dietrich subsequently forged ahead with her career, Garbo became more selective. The film features Garbo’s delivery of one of cinema’s most iconic lines: “I want to be alone.”
DIETRICH: BLONDE VENUS, JOSEF VON STERNBERG
SUN 15th (15.20)
Based on a short story Dietrich herself had written, and featuring an early performance by Cary Grant, the pre-Code Blonde Venus sees the actress once again return to the cabaret stage, but with motivations a world away from those of Lola Lola. Helen (Dietrich) is married to chemist Ned (Herbert Marshall), who is suffering from radium poisoning. To raise money for his treatment, Helen takes to the stage, shining even when performing in a gorilla suit, where she is noticed by wealthy politician Nick (Grant), with whom she begins an affair even as he promises to pay Ned’s medical bills.
GARBO: QUEEN CHRISTINA, ROUBEN MAMOULIAN
Tues 17th June (18.30)
Garbo stars as the seventeenth-century Swedish queen in this lavish production. Coming to power during the Thirty Years’ War, the monarch is depicted as a selfless ruler for whom romance is never a consideration until she meets an envoy from the Spanish King. Curiously, censors quite vocally objected to scenes in which Garbo dressed as a man and kissed a woman, a very different reaction to Dietrich’s similar, headline-grabbing activities in Morocco, of which this was surely an imitation.
GARBO: CAMILLE, GEORGE CUKOR
Sat 21st June (15.10)
One of the legendary Irving Thalberg’s final productions, Camille saw Garbo take the role of Marguerite, a courtesan in nineteenth-century Paris. Although she enjoys assignations with the wealthy Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell), she is drawn to the poorer Armand (Robert Taylor), whose love for her, unlike that of the Baron, is genuine. However, suffering from consumption and a chequered past, Marguerite’s chance for happiness with Armand seems slim. One of Garbo’s most well-received performances, it saw her receive her third Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and Camille was listed in 2005 as one of Time magazine’s 100 all-time best films.
DIETRICH: ANGEL, ERNST LUBITSCH
SUN 22nd June (15.10)
German-born director Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this tale of a love triangle involving the neglected Maria (Dietrich), her husband Frederick (Herbert Marshall), a high-ranking British diplomat, and Anthony (Melvyn Douglas), the man with whom she has a brief Parisian tryst and who only knows her by the sobriquet ‘Angel’. With the two men separated by the English Channel, Maria believes her secret safe until Anthony not only turns up in England, but in her home as a result of his previous acquaintance with her husband, forcing her to choose between the two in this elegant romantic drama.
DIETRICH: DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, GEORGE MARSHALL
THUR 26th (18.30)
In 1938, Harry Brandt, president of the Independent Theatre Owners Association, took out an ad in The Hollywood Reporter complaining about Hollywood’s continued employment of performers who were not a draw (‘box office poison’ was the phrase he invented to describe these stars): among those named were both Dietrich and Garbo. Although Garbo had already begun her withdrawal from the industry, Dietrich was still very much a working actress, and forced to accept her lower status. Here, she stars with James Stewart in a great Western as Frenchy, a cabaret girl (again) and inspiration for Blazing Saddles’ Lili von Shtupp.
GARBO: NINOTCHKA, ERNST LUBITSCH
SAT 28th (15.10)
Garbo, on the other hand, seemed to take the news as further motivation to walk away from Hollywood and those trappings of stardom with which she had never been even a little comfortable. Still, here, in Lubitsch’s hands, she is luminous, and received another Oscar nomination for her work. Ironically, Ninotchka, a sparkling romantic comedy in which audiences were promised, “Garbo laughs!”, was a critical and commercial success that marked something of a comeback. However, the negative reviews she received for her subsequent film (Two-Faced Woman, George Cukor, 1941) seems to have hardened her resolve: it was her final role.
DIETRICH: JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG, STANLEY KRAMER
SUN 29th (13.45)
In this, her last significant role and one that obviously had personal resonance, Dietrich proved unafraid to step out of the limelight as part of a sterling ensemble cast including Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, and William Shatner. A fictionalised recounting of 1947’s Judges’ Trial at Nuremberg, this clear-eyed and complex film made for a memorable end to Dietrich’s film career.
Tickets are available now for Dietrich x Garbo from the IFI website via ifi.ie/dietrich-x-garbo/ or via IFI Box Office in-person or over the phone via 01 679 3477, and multi-passes are available:
| 3 Film Pass* | €30.00 |
| 6 Film Pass* | €60.00 |
| 12 Film Pass* | €120.00 |
*Season membership fee of €5.00 is applicable to all bundles for Non-Members.