The Divine Woman
Greta Garbo's released film survives as a single tantalising reel while the rest of its performance is gone.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and directed by Victor Sjöström.
The Divine Woman was completed and distributed to ordinary audiences in 1928. Like most American silent features, it circulated on vulnerable film stock in an era before systematic preservation, and no complete publicly accessible print is now known.
Existence timeline
The Divine Woman is completed as a distributable motion picture.
The finished film reaches ordinary cinema audiences.
Known release prints and original elements fail to enter a complete accessible archive.
The Library of Congress documents the severe loss rate of American silent features and the film's survival status.
Surviving fragments preserve only part of the released work.
Why it ended
The released work disappeared as its known distribution copies and original elements failed to survive. Only fragmentary moving-image material is known, so the original full viewing experience is gone.
Last confirmed trace
One reel, still photographs, reviews and production records preserve fragments of the film.
What it left behind
Its surviving reel makes the film one of the clearest examples of a major star's released work remaining only in partial motion.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.