Greta Garbo in Love

 Photoplay magazine reviewed Love, "Anna Karenina? Not so's you could notice it. But John Gilbert and Greta Garbo melt the Russian snow with their love scenes. Will it be popular? Don't be silly." The present author understably has every need to In part John Bainbridge's quoting of Bengt Idestam Almquist in its near entirety, "Greta Garbo has never been better. In her first American pictures she was something different than this: a sensual body, thin and wriggling like an exotic liana, plus a couple of heavy eyelids that hinted all kins of picturesque lusts. But gradually Miss Garbo has worked her way towards becoming a real actress with depth and sincerity." Kenneth Macpherson of Close-Up magazine reviewed the performance of Greta Garbo in the film, "As this is the rottenest possible film, it is clear that its success is due to the beauty of Greta Garbo, who has a Belle Bennett part of mother love. In twenty years they will be trying vainly to give her those parts for which her youth and beauty now make her suited. As I say, the film is just tripe and Greta's clothes are an abomination...but for the fact of Greta's lovliness and her utter inabilbity to look like anything but an overgrown adolescent dressing up for the school play." That year, for the same magazine, H. D. begged to differ, writing, "Let's put Miss Garbo out of it entirely and say that Greta Garbo, under Pabst, was a Nordic ice-flower. Under preceeding and succeeding directors she was an over-grown hoyden or a buffet Guiness-please-miss. The performance of Greta Garbo in that subtle masterpiece Anna Karenina (Love) was inexplicably vulgar and incredibly dull. It was only by the greatest effort of will that one could visulaize in that lifeless and dough-like visage a trace of the glamour, the chizselled purity, the dazzling, almost unearthly beauty...Greta Garbo in The Joyless Street...remained an aristocrat. Greta Garbo as the wife of a Russian Court official and mistress of a man of the world, diademed and in sweeping robes in the palace of Karenin, waa a house-maide at a carnival."

     The magazine The Film Spectator in 1928 highlighted the films editing, "There is one cleaver feature in Love, the close up debauch in which Metro presents Jack Gilbert and Greta Garbo. In the way it places the closing title to one sequence serves as an introductory tile to the sequence that succeeds it. There is a fade out after the title, 'Then I will see you at the grand Duke's ball;' and a fade in on the ball without any further explanatory title." During June of 1927, Motion Picture magazine reported, "Greta Garbo's week of sulking and refusing to appear at the Metro studios has availed her nothing. The immigration authorities decided that Greta would have to go to work or be deported...She will begin work on Anna Karenina, the story that story that caused her final tempermental guesture and her desertion of the studios is to be directed by Dimitri Buchowetski and Richard Cortez was signed after his recent break with Paramount, to play the male lead." Cortez at the time was married to Alma Rubens. Motion Picture News during 1927 announced that Greta Garbo had signed a five year contract with M.G.M., "Her first story is from the pen of Count Tolstoy. The star is not yet twenty one years of age, but has won considerable popularity both in this country and abraod." It claimed that Garbo was to be given the starring role in Anna Karenina, which was to be directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki, "also under contract at M.G.M." Author and curator Jan-Christopher Horak gives a fairly uncontested account of the replacement of directors on the film, "Buchowetzki went to M.G.M. where he directed Valentia (1927) with Mae Murray, all of them costume films. In February 1927 he was assigned to direct Greta Garbo and Victor Varconi in Love (1927), the film that proved to be his Waterloo. Given the fact that he was Russian and had directed several other films set in Imperial Russia, Buchowetszki was the logical first choice. While Garbo supposedly held out for more money and a different co-star (Richard Cortez eventually replaced Varconi), Buchowetski began production in April, shooting a substantial amount of footage with Cortez. In the first week of May Garbo called in sick and stayed that way at John Gilbert's house untill the studio gave in...the director's original had been scrapped in its entirety." If this is accurate, for all intensive purposes, although only one film starring Greta Garbo, The Divine Woman (Victor Seastrom, 1928), is presently lost, the fragment of Greta Garbo in Love that were earlier filmed rushes, can be added to that. Film Daily, during April of 1927 had printed Buckowets,I Starts Love, which slated Richard Cortez and Greta Garbo in the principal characters, "The cast includes Lionel Barrymore, Helen Chadwick, Zazu Pitts....Doeothy Sebastian. Lorna Moon adapted the screenplay." During May of 1927 it ran the announcement Goulding Directing Love, "Dimitri Buchowetski has been replaced by Edmound Goulding as the director of Anna Karenina, in which Greta Garbo will poetry the title role" John Bainbridge merely writes that Dimitri Buchowetsky was dismissed as director of the film because of an inability to remain compatible, or amicable, with his actors before having had been being replaced by Edmund Goulding, but the biographer then quotes a nameless source that had been present as part of the filming, "'(John Gilbert) wanted to show Garbo how clever he was. Every scene meant his interference with Goulding. He insisted on trying to direct the picture. Garbo insisted that sHe could not act if anyone watched her.'..Whatever the state of their private relations, Miss Garbo habitually deferred to Jack Gilbert on all professional matters. Whenever a question arose, her customary remark was, 'I ask Jack.'" Motion Picture News quietly reported during July of 1927, "Production of Love will be resumed shortly with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in the leads. The Picture was halted because of Miss Garbo's illness.
That year Photoplay Magazine had included a Photoplay caption beneath a portrait of Greta Garbo That read, "Latest War Bulletin from the Firing Line: Greta starts peacefully to work on Anna Karenina. Some changes to the title Love, Greta goes home pleading illness. She says she's not temperamental." the next photo caption read, Greta Garbo does not think she bill go home. Greta positively enjoys her work in Love now that John Gilbert is definitely cast as her leading man. here is the first photograph of Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina and John as Vronsky." 

     Sven-Hugo Borg writes about his having observed John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, "They were cast as lovers in "Love" ("Anna Karenina") and out of that picture came not only another screen triumph for Garbo, but the flowering of what I believe to have been the only real love of her life," He continues, "I believe with all my heart that John Gilbert is the only man who ever touched the deep wells of passionate emotion which lie buried in the breasts of Garbo." Borg alludes to Garbo not having to have wanted to marry Gilbert and of her keeping the details of the romance from Mauritz Stiller. "She was in the arms of Jack Gilbert when I first saw her. The air was surcharged. The atmosphere glowed." Picture Play during 1928 had published its "face to face" account, Once Seen, Never Forgotten, of one of its writers, Malcom H. Oettinger, having met Greta Garbo, "Gilbert, resplendent in his uniform he wore as Vronsky, in Love, was good enough to introduce me to Greta. Even with this auspicious start she was difficult to coax into conversation...For the first minute or two after Gilbert had withdrawn I found my time taken up solely by her beauty." The accompanying photograph of Greta Garbo was taken by Ruth Harriet Louise and was a cut-out outline of the actress, as though silhouette shaped. 

     Rilla Page Palmborg, who published The Private Life of Greta Garbo in 1931 gave an account of the filming of "Love". "The few persons allowed on the set declared that the Garbo-Gilbert romance was on again in full swing and that the Stars were again living their love scenes and not acting them. Calloused property men, scene shifters and electricians stood spellbound when Jack took Greta in his arms. They declared with pardonable exaggeration, that the air around the set was charged with passion." Before continuing on to an account of the filming of "The Divine Woman" costarring Lars Hanson rather than John Gilbert, Palmborg reported that it was while making "Love" that Greta Garbo had begun to decline interviews. " 'Interviews,' she said. 'how I hate them! When I get to be a big star, I will never give another.' " Rilla Page Palmborg cautiously noted that it was also at this time that Mauritz Stiller had decided to return to Sweden. Palmborg explains that exotic qowns were required to be worn for the Tolstoy adaptation and that Greta Garbo a stand in named Gerladine de Vorak, who had made sure that the gowns were fitted to Garbo. "Occaisionally, in long shots, when her face could not be seen, she was used in the picture."

Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1929 provided a brief synopsis of the film Love, directed by Edmund Goulding, "Theme: Tragic love drama adapted from Tolstoi's classic novel Anna Karenina. Forfeiting the right to her child, whom she adores, wife of Russian nobleman falls madly in love with a young officer. Finally realizing fate such love brings, girl because of her lover's lost prestige in his regiment and her deprivation from her child, hurls herself beneath the wheels of an oncoming train."

     National Board of Review magazine saw "Love" as being an incomplete adaptation of the novel Anna Karenina, that it had abridged the description of Russian society in order to indulge the development of character for a return at the box-office, "The picture deals exclusively with the central love intrigue and resolves itself in aI'm at series of love scenes, scenes and scenes of self sacrifice. It is a fine solo performance for Greta Garbo, seconded by Mr. John Gilbert." American critics had made the same objected that Selma Lagerloff had, that films were not entirely faithful adaptations due to constraints of the art form and demands of the audience.

. Back to John Gilbert and Greta Garbo Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926)

After listing "Tower of Lies as a reunion of Victor Sjostrom, Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney from the film "He Who Gets Slapped", and that Lon Chaney would "appear in another stunning vehicle..Title and details to be announced soon", a magazine advertisement paid for by M.G.M announcing its 52 quality films of 1925-1926 listed the film "Flesh and the Devil" as "The Victor Seastrom-John Gilbert special. Sjostrom as director, Gilbert as star make a marvelous money-winning combrination. It is the sucessor to 'He Who Gets Slapped'.

It is difficult to find notice that Victor Sjostrom had been originally slated to direct Greta Garbo and yet it is unlikely that Marcus Loew would have been in error. It is only by flash forwarding to Greta Garbo's fourth film and by claiming that her first three were already in the planning stage without her that we can see the phenomenon of Greta Garbo as having arisen from a combined phenomenon of Greta Garbo/John Gilbert, which it inevitably did. Moving Picture World of 1925 published the predictions of the then President of Metro-Goldwyn. " 'The Flesh and the Devil' is a Victor Seastrom-John Gilbert Special. It is by Herman Suderman. It will be directed by Seastrom, the man who made 'He Who Gets Slapped' and I don't know what better recommendation there is than that. There will be one other John Gilbert production, title and details of which we will announce later." The question is did Loew publish this before director Monte Bell had seen the screen test of Greta Garbo spliced into the rushes of "The Temptress", which would entail his holding The Flesh and The Devil for her during the completion of two film in production- it is quite possibly in that Loew at the same time had announced " 'The Torrent' by Ibanez will have Aileen Pringle in the leading role and this also will be a Cosmopolitan Picture made at our studio. It will be big in every way."

During 1927, the paid magazine advertisements M.G.M. published for "Flesh and the Devil" had resorted to "Hot damn! What a great picture."

For those interested in how the Greta Garbo John Gilbert pairing did come about from 1925 onward, Loew happenned to add, "There will be one Fred Niblo production on our schedule. Details on this picture have not been completed as yet and will be announced later." There literally seemed to be more excitement about the film "The Mysterious Island" containing Technicolor sequences than anyone named Greta Garbo speaking on the screen with John Barrymore.

Garbo photographer William Daniels in 1926, in addition to lighting Garbo and Gilbert was also cinematographer to the films Altars of Desire (seven reels)) under Christy Cabanne and Bardley the Magnificient under the direction of King Vidor; that is not to say that that is the limit of his contribution to film history; Daniel's had trained on several of Von Strohiem's important films, beginning with Blind Husbands in 1919 and continued in Hollywood after the making of the 1939 film Ninotchka, until 1970. Daniels has been deemed an "inventor of detail" for his ingenuity by American Cinematographer magazine and it was noted that during the silent era he would light the scene with a stand-in and use a bicycle horn when finished and ready to replace the figure with the film's star.  Although Daniels seems uncredited for his photography on Von Strohiem's "The Merry Widow", starring John Gilbert and Mae Murray, he is noted for work on the 1925 film "Woman and Gold" (James  P. Hogan) for Gotham Productions,  film which starred actress Sylvia Breamer.  Film historian Leo Braudy has written, "The lighting that William Daniels created for Garbo's early silent film rendered her more erotic than any spoken dialogue."

     Hollywood magazine during 1935 printed the article,"Garbo's cameraman Talks At Last", in which William Daniels primarily, for whatever reason, dispelled some of the more than prevalent publicity about Greta Garbo having been " gloomy, aloof, frightened or imperious" It claimed that he had originally become Garbo's cameraman when the studio ace that had been assigned to the film "The Torrent" had on the third day encountered an accident and needed a crushed finger amputated and with the studio busy, only young William Daniels was available to film Garbo. In light of what Daniels said during the filming of Anna Karenina, it would stand to reason that where Greta Garbo was foreign, the studio might reassign the same film crew in her pictures that were to follow. Daniels is quoted as having said, "She's changed. Developed. Matured. Ten years ago, she was a young girl undergoing the bewildering experience of finding herself suddenly famous in a land whose language she couldn't understand. She kept her head then, as she has ever since. Don't imagine she has had an easy time. For instance, look at the way she has perfected her English. I don't think she has learned so much by study as actually making herself use the language...And Miss Garbo is fond of America. She loves the Californian sunlight, basking in it, walking in it, incessantly."

      There is an account of Rowland V. Lee having met Greta Garbo when she had first been introduced to the United States in 1925, "Jack Gilbert was all she wanted to talk about."

     Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were to attend the premiere of Bardley the Magnificient (Vidor/Daniels,1926) together. Motion Picture magazine printed, "Hollywood is still talking. The newspaper wires still buzz everytime ther telephones the other. Yet in spite of this, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert dare appear at openings and other Hollywood functions."  During this screen writer Dorothy Farnum ran magazine advertisements announcing her having written the screenplay to the film Bardley the Magnificient and the portrait from the film of John Gilbert printed in Motion Picture magazine had been taken by Ruth Harriet Louise. 1926 was also the year that Greta Garbo, John Gilbert and Lars Hanson would film an adaptation of the novel The Undying Past, bringing its plotline to the screen untill its emotional concluding scene at the Isle of Friendship during Flesh and the Devil Picture Play magazine during 1927 published what seems to be a seldom seem photograph of Greta Garbo and Jack Gilbert, their staring at each other across a table. In When Hollywood Discovered Bridge, the caption below the four playing cards read, "The Flesh and the Devil quartet- Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Jack Gilbert and Director Clarence Brown- more than once took time off during the production to play a hurried rubber. as may be seen, though, Greta and Jack, who are usually partners didn't give their full attention to the game." As posed, they are looking at each other with a sense of either impending doom, or a mutual consent that would soon decide to spring into action, as though the photograph were staged.

     Clarence Sinclair Bull published a portrait of Lars Hanson in Picture Play magazine during 1927. it's caption read, "That slow intent gaze which was so powerful a factor in making Hanson's Reverend Dimmesdale in 'The Scarlet Letter' a convincing portrayal is here pictured with equally telling effect. Hanson will next be seen in 'The Flesh and the Devil'.

     Biographer John Bainbridge quotes Clarence Brown as though Brown had contributed to the mythical quality of any romance between Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, adding celluloid, or perhaps, tinsel rather, to the publicity it had already acquired, " 'I am working with raw material,' Brown said rather breathlessly. 'They are working in that blissful state of love that is so like a rosy cloud that they imagine themselves hidden behind it, as well as lost in it.'"

      For Photoplay Agnes Smith in 1927 wrote the intrigue between John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, "He worked with her in a picture called Flesh and the Devil. He proclaimed his intention of marrying her. As for Greta she seemed to enjoy the rush. And then, when everyone was all set for another Hollywood wedding, Greta walked out...John Gilbert sticks to his story...She is a wonderful woman. A delightful woman And the most fascinating woman in pictures. 'She is,' says Mr. Gilbert, 'a mountian of a girl. She is a statue. There is something eternal about her. Not only did she baffle me, but she baffled everyone at the studio.'"

Of her off-screen Clarence Brown romance with John Gilbert, Clarence Brown has been quoted as having said, "After i finsihed a scene with them, I felt like an intruder. I'd walk away to let them finish what they were doing." Brown has also been quoted as having said, "Those two were in a world of their own." Bainbridge quotes the director with, "Clarence Brown introduced them on the set of Flesh and the Devil, 'It was love at first sight,'and it lasted through many years.'" As a biographer, Bainbridge estimates the facets involved in the relationship, "her response to Gilbert's gaily insistent attention was quick, though it was not her nature that it should have been precipitous...Because of their work, Garbo and Gilbert spent all of their days together, and Gilbert took advantage of every oppurtunity to press his cause...Off the set, Gilbert and Garbo were also getting better acquainted. They often dined together, and the young actress became a rather frequent visitor a Gilbert's Tower Road mansion." This estimation reveals Gilbert's advance, "When Flesh and the Devil was finished, Gilbert asked Garbo to marry him- a proposal that he was to make more than once again." The account in Photoplay written by Agnes Smith is very much like John Bainbridge's, "A great many stories have been broadcast concerning the romance of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The scenario, according to Hollywood's most reliable gossips runs something like this. John met the beautiful Scandinavian and immediately started an impetuous courtship. He made no secret of his devotion to the lovely Greta. He accompanied her to all the parties. He lunched with her and dined with her." When "Flesh and the Devil" was reviewed by Photoplay Magazine, it was seen as "a picture filmed when the romance of Jack Gilbert and Greta Garbo (see Jack's story in this issue) was at its height." It saw the performance of Greta Garbo as "flashing" whereas that of John Gilbert was delivered by one who "does overshadow his scenes".
Picture Play Magazine in the beginning of 1927 playfully alluded to the meteoric notoriety of Greta Garbo by reintroducing her to magazine audiences as the mystery new to stardom, but elusive by virtue of her celebrity with a portrait taken by Ruth Harriet Louise; its caption read, "That sad, sad look on Greta Garbo's face is deceiving. She's really very happy over here in America and they say that she loved working with John Gilbert in 'Flesh and the Devil'."

Journalist I.W Irving, during 1926, expalined the film and the act of audience reception in the periodical Hollywood Topics, "As for John Gilbert, well...its one of the best things her ever did. The flapper will simply rave ober him. His love scenes with Greta Garbo will go in motion picture history as a momentous inspiration. And Greta Garbo...she's simply bewitching. The male element will undoubtedly rave over her. So will the female element, for they themselves will learn a few things in the art of love making...But it is Gilbert and Garbo in their great scenes that put the picture over as a directorial triumph."

During the middle of 1927 Photoplay featured the two pictured together in the News and Gossip of the Studios section, "All bets are off on the Garbo-Gilbert wedding. For at least five days Hollywood was in a flurry of excitement. Jack and Greta, fairest of Fjordland, were rumored to have trekked to a neighboring hamlet and murmurred, "I do." A search of marriage license permits revealed nothing. There is bleak silence from the two." Bainbridge adds, "'Gilbert pleaded and begged that they should marry, but Garbo just did not want to,' the director Clarence Brown said recently." Picture Picture magazine during 1927 queries Is the Gilbert-Garbo Match Really Off? Prompted by journalist Dorothy Herzog. The accompanying portrait of Jack Gilbert was photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise with the caption, "There can be no doubt that Jack Gilbert is saddened by the unhappy turn taken by what promised to be his great romance". She began, "She is a thousand years old. She came into the world with all it's knowledge. She knows everything, and instinctively remembers everything.' 'and you love Greta Garbo?', we interrupted. Jack Gilbert's shadowed eyes swept our face swiftly, then looked away. 'She is. Wonderful girl. We were merely good pals,' he evaded, alertly on the defensive. 'is it true you were engaged to her?' 'We were never engaged.' ------ Back to Greta Garbo John Gilbert M.G.M.advertised Greta Garbo in 1927, it often taking full page magazine pages that mentioned several actors and actresses that were currently at the studio at any given time. Garbo had become, "The most sensational find in years, she clicked immediately in The Torrent, then in The Temptress and now Flesh and the Devil" Later it advertised, "Greta Garbo's amazing hold on the public cannot be duplicated anywhere in this industry. Flesh and the Devil is just a foretaste of the money she means for the theaters. " --------- Collen Moore must have read about or in fact contacted the Greta Garbo apparition; during 1928 she compared herself to Greta Garbo by coming to her aid in Motion Picture Classic Magazine, "most of the greatly beloved women of history- they have been possessed of the childish appeal, every one of them. Perhaps not so much childish as wistful, whimsical. Seems a funny thing to say, but Greta Garbo has it too. Really, she romps and plays it less than that worn-out term, vamp, than anyone I know. In its way, it gets across." In an interview during which she outlines her having met John Gilbert, Greta Garboas quoted by Ruth Biery in The Story of Greta Garbo, said, "When I finisihed The Temptress, they gave me the script for The Flesh and the Devil to read. I did not like the story. I did not want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing but tempting men in pictures." This is oddly echoed by National Board of Review Magazine, in which the conclusion was drawn that, "the leading contributor to the success of Flesh and the Devil is Greta Garbo" It provided a synopsis of the film that also lent a background to its addressing the desire of Greta Garbo to leave her earlier " ladies of vampire repute" characters and to be seen as a more serious dramatic, or perhaps romantic dramatic, actress. it primarily sees her as having been a then more believable character, " Miss Garbo in her later day personal ion shows a frail physique and a fragile ethereal air. She is infinitely more civilized and all the more suitable for not being so deliberate."

Scott Reisfeld, the great nephew of Greta Garbo, reiterates the sentiment that Greta Garbo was dissatified with her assignments and needed to play more demanding characters in her reluctance to star in the film "Women Love Diamonds" but he also questions the part played by Louis B. Mayer in generating the conception of Garbo being a recluse, to which she may have merely acquiesced, "But Mayer was persistent in his attempts to compel Garbo into submission. He intiated a smear campaign in the media to depict Garbo as a megalomaniac. A negative media campaign supported threats to deport her."

The portrait of Greta Garbo that year had been photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise, the caption reading, "We are feverishingly waiting her performance opposite John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil." By then, it was increasingly unnecessary to introduce her as a rising star. The photograph of Greta Garbo Ruth Harriet Louise published in Photoplay carried a caption referring to her as "the object of John Gilbert's fervant wooing". In regard to the direction of Clarence Brown, Motion Picture new reviwed the film during 1927 with, "And Clarence Brown, who has advanced so rapidly the past year, has brought out every point to build a story which fascinates in its paly of caprice and feeling. It is touched with sex- but sex never becomes rampant. It always remains a film of visual excellence...Early scenes project the development of the affair. What follows are the dramatic complications which culminate in a happy ending- the only flaw in the picture." Under the magazine's section on Explotation Angles, it advised: "Play up Gilbert and Garbo. Use stills. Cash in on title. Play up director. Go the limit." When the film was reviewed by Motion Picture Magazine the film was praised with, "Here is one of the best pictures reflected upon the screen in many a moon, the perfection of which is only marred by the ending, which appears tacked on, as an afterthought...Greta is a beautiful nymphomaniac...You never feel the chaos she causes exaggerated. she's attractive enough to wreak has ok in a man's world." Paul Rotha reviewed a what he deemed to be "a film of more than passing cleverness" directed by Clarence Brown, "Flesh and the Devil had some pretensions to be called a good film. The theme was sheer, undiluted sex,and Brown used a series of close ups to get this across with considerable effect. Notable also was his use of Ngles, different indeed from customary German and American method and the happiness with which he settled his characters in their environment." Back to Greta Garbo John Gilbert Greta Garbo and Jack Gilbert in Love< Film Daily during 1926 sported two interesting entries. During September it wrote, "Marcel de Sarno, director, and Raymond Doyle, scenarist, returned to M.G.M. studios after a trip for research data for Ordeal, which de Sarno will direct with Greta Garbo and Lon Chaney. In November, Film Daily reported, "Clarence Brown, who has just completed the direction of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil is preparing to direct Lillian Gish's next production, The Wind, screen adaptation by Frances Marion of Dorothy Scarborough's story. It seems either misprint or misquote that Exhibitor's Trade Review had earlier, during 1925, published, "Miss Alice Scully, a young scenario writer wrote the script for Stella Maris...since the first of the year has also written scripts for Parisian Love and The Undying Past for Victor Seastrom." Greta Garbo<Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Temptress (Fred Niblo, 1926)

Greta Garbo as continuance of Vamp

Author Roger Manvell, in his volume The Film and the Public notes that after World War I, the genres that were already in place began to take a new turn with the new decade and that the star system that had emerged with silent film began to look for different interests to coincide with the new modernity. He writes, "the vamp, the siren, and even the shimmering courtesan played by Marlene Deitrich seemed dated, if not a little absurd. No great star has risen to take the place of Garbo and inherit her indisputable and hypnotic hold upon her world audiences." Manvell reinforces his impression, "The twenties became a wild period in filmmaking and themes of marital infidelity and liscence of all kinds were again carried to the heights of a new absurdity with titles like 'Temptation', 'Passion Flame', 'Flaming Youth' and 'La,La,Lucille'. The glamor star was in real demand and names like Pola Negri, Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo began to be well known."
While waiting for the next film to be made by Greta Garbo, Photoplay magazine during 1926 printed, "Yet an automobile almost kept Greta from Metro. Mayer had seen Miss Garbo's work in a foreign made film, The Atonement of Gosta Berling. THe picture is incidentally directed by Mauritz Stiller who is directing the second Garbo opus and it it considered an artistic gem, but aositive flop as so far as American audiences are concerned. For that reason it probably will never be released here." In actuality films from Svenska Bio were generally released years after they had been made in Sweden; the article continued to elaborate that Greta Garbo knew that movie stars were provided with limousines whereas Mayer would not include one in her contract! insisting that they were bought by the stars themselves. Having related the disappointment on the part of Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller when Stiller had not be asked to direct Greta Garbo in The Torrent, one that would have returned Garbo to Sweden had it not been for Stiller's encouragement, biographer John Bainbridge relates Stiller's optimism when assigned her second film, The Temptress. In Sweden it had been the reverse where Garbo had to audition for Stiller, a more than well known director who had already directed Lars Hanson in Erotikon, a film Greta Garbo had seen in theaters. "Now that he had been given a chance to direct his protegee his dark mood had disappeared. He was full of excitement and enthusiasm. 'At last,' he topld Lars Hanson, 'They'll see what Greta can do.'" Stiller wanted to open the film with a discovery shot, or revelatory shot, that dollyed back, pulled back, to show the wider context of the scene while establishing it location. "Telling Hanson of his plans, Stiller confidently predicted, 'We'll show them a thing or two.'" Upon arriving on the set, in a studio system that in regard to constructing the photoplay, had evolved from Griffith and Ince, Stiller was a prefigurement of the auteur, expressing his bewilderment that there would be an assistant director, an assistant producer, a script girl and other members of the film crew present on the set and attempting to dismiss them, "All I need is a camera and actors." The author continues, " 'They brought me here to direct because they liked my methods.' he told Hanson. 'Instead they try to teach me to direct.'" Lars Hanson explained further "Stiller tied to work in Hollywood the same way he worked in Sweden...He had his own particular way of making a picture. He shot scenes as he wished, not necessarily in sequence and not necessarily the ones he intended to use. He liked to shoot everything, and then make the film he wanted to by cutting. He could never stick to a schedule." Both John Bainbridge and Richard Corliss relay that there were stories of Stiller confronting a language barrier while instructing cameraman and that he would begin with "Stop" when he wanted to say "places, roll them, or action" and that he had interchanged "Go" with "Cut or Print" when the scene was to conclude, although the present author is uncertain as to whether it was included specificlly in the published reminiscenes of actors that often made their way into fan magazines or what their source may have been. Author Anthony Slide, while offerring biographies of one hundread silent film stars quotes actress Virginia Brown Faire on working with Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller,"That was just her first picture in this country and she had a difficult time with the English language. Mauritz Stiller was a big director in Sweden, but he was by that time a very sick man, although nobody seemed to know it. And every scene she did, he'd make her do over twenty times, at least...Garbo was difficult and remote."

Before the release of the film, Motion Picture Magazine attested to the experience and craftsmanship of Maurtiz Stiller as a film director by publishing a photograph from the set of the film which was captioned, "The dancing scenes of Greta Garbo and Antonio Moreno in The Temptress, which Mauritz Stiller is directing in this photograph, were filmed by a camera attached to a moving platform which followed them about the floor." If this were Stiller's only contribution to, or influence upon classical narrative and the temporal-spatial relationships of camera to subject, it would be notable, excepting that Stiller had previously filmed in Sweden and built the traditions of filmmaking there as one of its pioneers under Charles Magnusson. The Hollywood system that had evolved from Griffith and Ince had placed Stiller and Clarence Brown as directors that created camerawork and technique. 
Within a fortnight, two events occurred which seemed not to have shaken the on-screen Greta Garbo personna, or the need to create an off-screen Garbo character, as though they went unnoticed as more mystery around the recluse seemed to build. Biographer John Bainbridge writes of her sister Alva's passing away during the early filming of The Temptress, "As soon as Garbo informed Stiller of the tragic news, he dismissed the cast and took her home." Apparently Garbo was present when Stiller was dismissed and replaced, after ten days of shooting, as the film's director. She had been waiting outside the building during the conference, pacing the sidewalk. "Stiller was laid low with despondency and he was also ailing physically. As he sat on his terrace brooding, Garbo went about propping him up with pillows," Bainbridge records, "and doing what she could to cheer him up." According to Bainbridge, "when Stiller saw Thalberg after the premiere he delivered an invective about Garbo, as well as an excellant script, having been ruined by him." Motion Picture Magazine chronicled the event as nearly expected, "Stiller has sufferred from the fate that overcomes most foreign directors shen they come to Hollywood. He was unable to grasp an understanding of the business and technical end of making a motion picture in an American studio." In one of the many posthumous accounts of the career of Mauritz Stiller that appeared linking him to Greta Garbo, Ruth Biery intimated during 1932 that Stiller was removed from The Temptress because of an objection made by Antonio Moreno, the director apparently having insisted that the actor wear a pompadour to compensate fro Garbo's having had been being the taller of the two. Greta Garbo described to Photoplay Magazine her filming in The Temptress under the direction of Fred Niblo, "I could not undeIrstand the English directions. Week in, week out from seven untill six. Six months on the story. More than twenty costumes to try on over and over. That is why I donot care about clothes. There are so many clothes in every picture, I can not think of them when I am away from a picture. I never missed a day. I was never late for work." Photoplay inserted a paragraph on Greta Garbo written in bold type into one of its backpages during 1927, "Fred Niblo, who had directed the alabaster and ivory Garbo was making the usual introductory speeches. Remarking on the beauty of Greta's performance, he further said that it was most difficult to direct her for she spoke not one word of English. 'Do you?' queried Niblo turning to her where the Swedish lorelei sat. 'No', answered Greta slowly, perfectly, 'I do not speak one word of English.'" Irregardless of Greta Garbo having been reluctant to work with Monta Bell and preferring to remain under the wing of Mauritz Stiller, a look independent of that to the 1927 Motion Picture New Booking Guide and Studio Directory draws a contrast between the directors Monta Bell and Fred Niblo, the former depicted in biographical sketches as merely a novice, the latter as experienced as to where he would soon become head of the studio, Monta Bell, Metro Goldwyn Mayer director, is comparatively a newcomer to the motion picture industry." Where Bell is noted as having began with Chaplin, Niblo is noted as having begun with Thomss Ince and for his directing his wife, Enid Bennett, "Motion Picture Stars are not the only ones to claim interesting claim to backgrounds."
Film Daily during 1926 included a column of what it considered to be pertinent Newspaper Opninions, or newspaper clippings, on recently released films; these touted the "seductive charm of languid eyed Elena, the "gorgeous beauty" Greta Garbo, "who besides wearing stunning clothes can also act" and a Garbo that "vitalizes the name part of this picture." Motion Picture News during 1926 also carried a similar section entitled Newspaper Opinions on New Pictures, in which it quoted the exact same reviews, where, "Greta Garbo is a delight for the eye", "Greta Garbo makes every move a picture" and although they praised the newcomer Garbo in General a mild outlook was taken of her vamping, or being illicit as a mysterious foreign road to perdition, in the press quotes of that year. The Exceptional Photoplays department of National Board of Review Magazine credited William Daniels and Gaetano Gardino as having been the photographers of the film The Temptress, "The Temptress brings Greta Garbo to the attention of American audiences as an actress of note and unusual beauty...She is not half a minute on the screen before you know her as an artist,pliable and lively. This big starring vehicle gives her the ample opportunity to prove her versatility...The first Paris sequence is the equal in tonal quality and feeling of anything that has been done in films. It is true with strong character drawing. Miss Garbo makes Elena a breathing person." Motion Picture Magazine featured a still from on the set of the film captioned, "Fred Niblo insists on realism...and this scene of Tony Moreno and Greta Garbo in The Temptress promises to provide a thrill when it reaches the scene. Note the angle of the camera."
Bainbridge reviewed the film by writing, "Despite its florid subtitles and spurious plot, The Temptress was another distinct triumph for Garbo." Educational Screen Magazine, during a month in which it had reviewed the film Bardleys the Magnificient also looked at the film, "Most of this can be dismissed as perfectly ordinary.It is merely a tale of a siren who couldn't help attracting men, with an appended list of the fatalities...Miss Garbo as. Woman of the streets demonstrates a remarkable dramatic ability."               Photoplay reviewed the performance of Greta Garbo in the film briefly, "The Ibanez story is forgiven and forgotten when Greta Garbo is in the cast. Greta is a show in herself." Photoplay reiterated its sentiment, "While this Belasco-Ibanez story is crammed full of melodramatic action-much of it preposterous- Greta Garbo makes the proceedings not only believable, but compelling. Such a role strains at the probabilities, but Miss Garbo makes Elena highly effective. She is beautiful, she flashes and scintillates with singular appeal...'The Temptress' is all Garbo. Nothing else matters."
There is a report that M.G.M purchased the talking rights to both The Torrent and The Temptress in 1932. Bent Forslund adds,"Her first two films, The Torrent and The Temptress, both in 1926, were insignificant, but showed that she had appeal. The audience liked her." The screenplays to the first two films in which Greta Garbo had appeared, The Torrent and the Temptress (nine reels) both had been adaptations of the novels of Vincente Belasvo Ibanez, their having been titled Among the Orange Trees and The Earth Belongs to Everyone, respectively. When interviewed by Motion Picture Magazine, novelist Vincente Belasco Ibanez was quoted as having said, "The future of the camera is limitless. Now it is going ahead very fast. There is no standard in the cinema. Why do the artists not get together and set up standards?"
The novels written by Vincente Belasco Ibanez also include "The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse", filmed after "Blood and Sand" in 1921, "Enemies of Women" (Crosland 1923), starring Alma Rubens, and the film "Marie Nostrum" filmed in 1926 by Rex Ingram. The lost film "Circe, the Enchantress" (Robert Z. Leonard, 1924) featured a screenplay written by Ibanez specifically for the actress Mae Murray.

     Motion Picture Magazine reviewed the film by noting, "It must be admitted that The Temptress is a bore. It would seem to be a story of a woman whom all men love and whose curious fate is to destroy all men who love her- but not through her own will but as an inevitable consequence of her fatal lure...She at length atones by destroying herself to save the one man she really loves...Greta Garbo as the unhappy temptress, has a role which required of her precisely nothing...Antonio Moreno's role calls for a little more." The magazine also published photo of Greta Garbo "vamping" before the film's release, captioned, "Judging from the oval photographs above, The Temptress is well named. Although Greta Garbo has only been on the American screen for a short time, she enjoys quite a vogue."

Motion Picture News included among the films Production Highlight the "atmosphere, settings and fine editing" Its Exploitation Angles included "Play up Greta Garbo and Antonio Moreno and mention others of fine cast." Its review of the film read, "It may be defined as a tragic melodrama, one which is treated intellectually and with considerable imagination...Fred Niblo demonstrates again that he can be trusted to breathe in this type of I'm story- one which is similar in outline to Ibanez's other story creation Blood and Sand...Moreover, it is splendidly cast with Greta Garbo as the sinuous siren and Antonio Moreno as her Spanish lover." The Over the Teacups section of Picture Play magazine during 1926 quoted someone named Fanny the Fan, who had attended a "cat party" given by screenwriter France's Marion. Among the guests that night were Lillian Gish, Vilma Banky, Anna Q. Nilsson, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lilla Lee and Kathleen Key.  Marion that night screened a new Norma Talmadge film in her small theater. During the article, Fanny related having previously met Greta Garbo, who was "fascinating to look at." (Picture Play) "Kathleen Key is working in The Temptress with her and she says that it is an inspiration to watch her. Incidentally, Kath got her role in that because of her expressive, big eyes. Mr. Stiller, the Swedish director that is making the picture asked for the girl with the biggest eyes, and Kath got the part without any argument."

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