Swedish Silent Film, director John W. Brunius

   

     In the United States, Photoplay magazine during 1919 included two still photographs, one of Mary Johnson and one of Gosta Ekman in Puss in Boots. The former was captioned," above is Miss Johnson and Carlo Kell-Moller in an exterior study. miss Johnson is an ingenue leading woman of a type that we make favorites of in america. location work in sweden hasn't become a bore, evidently, as both town and country people impressed by the novelty of the thing are heartily inclined to make the companies their guests instead of momentary and suspected tenants." it also happened to recapitulate its belief that the import of swedish films had previously been prohibited based on the premise that germany had been scrapping the films in order to produce high explosives before the armistice. The director of Puss and Boots ("Masterkattan I stovlar") John Brunius, the silent film director married to swedish film director Pauline Bruinius, is described by Forsyth Hardy in the volume Scandinavian Film as having been "the most considerable figure often linked with the major directors", his having gained renown for a series of historical dramas begun only a few years later. John Brunius had co-scripted his directorial debut "Puss and Boots" with writer Sam Ask. The film was also the first film in which actress Anna Carlsten was to appear. Author Tytti Solla notes that both John Brunius and Rune Carlsten had been trained as actors. Nils Bouveng, the manager of Skandia, had previously been the manager of Hasselblad studios where Rune Carlsten had also been under the producer's supervision.
During July of 1918, in the United States, Motion Picture World announced the formation of the new company of Filmaktiebolget Skandia, which would include the merging of Skandia Film. “The company expects to have under contract popular Scandinavian actors. The studio will be that of the Hasselblad company at Sodra Linden (Goteburg). The present structure will be enlarged and modernized so that there may be productions on a large scale. The new company will start producing in May.”
While with Filmindustri Skandia, John Brunius directed the film "Oh Tommorow Night" ("Ah I Morron Kvall"), which he co-scripted with writer Sam Ask. Photographed by Hugo Edlund, the film stars actresses Eva Eriksson, Mary Graber, Hulda Malmstrom and Gucken Cederborg.
John Bruinius during 1919 directed “The Girl from Solbakken/The Fairy from Solbaken” (”Synnove Solbakken”), based on the novel written by Bjornstjerne in 1857. The assistant director to the film was Einar Brunn, it having been filmed in both Sweden and Norway by photographers Hugo Edlund and Arthur Thorell. Starring Lars Hanson and Karin Molander, it was the first film in which actresses Ellen Dall, Ingrid Sundall and Solvieg Hedengran would appear. The film reunited Sam Ask with John Bruinius, they both having co-written the script, as with the film Masterkattan I Stovlar. Tytti Soila, in regard to the film’s editing writes, “The film’s conflict of ideas is condensed in a sequence when there’s cross-cutting between a religious revival meeting at Synnove’s home and young people celebrating Midsummer by dancing in a meadow.” This seems to be the same sequence that Bo Florin credits Brunius with cutting across the 180 degree line. Scholar Bo Florin, in an article entitled “Norwegian Tableaux: A Norway Lass” writes that “The plot of the film faithfully follows Bjornson’s story.” Florin goes further to look at the adaptation of the visual narrative of the novel, alighting upon observations by both Leif Furhammar and Rune Waldecranz that Bruinius replicates tableau like compositions by the painter Tidemand, showing bruinius’s acurracy in reproduction and adds that he also uses the painting Swedish painter Killian Zoll. This was at a time when Skandia specifically was in competition with Svenska Bio over Nordic Literature on the screen.
     Actor Einar Hanson is listed among the cast of the 1919 film People of Hemso (Hemsoborna) directed by Carl Barclind for Scandia. The film was adapted from the work of August Strindberg by Sam Ask and photographed by Hugo Edlund. Hilma Barklind and Mathilda Casper appear in the film.
Filmindustri Inc. Skandia had begun in 1918; two years later Skandia merged with Svenska Bio to form a partnership between Charles Magnusson and Nils Bourevy to run Svensk Filmindustri. In the United States, Photoplay magazine recorded, "The Skandia Film Corporation has just finished the construction of a great glass studio, modeled after and lighted by American methods, near Langangen, north of Stockholm." Jon Wengstrom, in Sweden during this century, has noted that John Brunius not only continued to direct with Svensk Filmindustri after the merger, but produced "period pieces" for his own company.
     Actor Lars Hanson appeared on screen for Scandia Film under the direction of Rune Carlsten in the film A Dangerous Proposal (Etta fanlight firer, 1919), starring with Gun Cronvall, Hilda Categren and actress Uno Henning in what was to be her first on screen appearance.
Photoplay, during 1919, noted, "The Skandia Film Corporation, the employer of these young stars is doing some really big plays on the screen. Among them are several pieces of Bjornsterne Bjornson and a modern drama of social conditions by Danish playwright Pontoppidan. The title of this is The Bomb." Bomben (1920) was directed by Rune Carlsten, written by Sam Ask and photographed by Rauol Reynolds. The film starred Karin Molander and Gosta Ekman. Rune Carlsten would call upon scriptwriter Sam Ask and photographer Raoul Reynolds again during 1920 when directing Snows of Destiny (Familjens Traditioner), based on a play by Einar Froberg and starring Gosta Ekman Tora Teje and Mary Johnson.
     During 1920, the Swedish director John Brunius wrote and directed two notable films, the first of which, Thora van Deken, starred Gosta Ekman, Ellen Dall and Edvin Adolphson, which Pauline Brunius in the title role. The film was an adaptation of a novel written by Henrik K. Pontoppidan. The second, Gycrksviscarna, photographed by Hugo Edlind, starred Pauline Brunius with Nils Asther and Ragnar Arvedson. Both films were produced by Filmindustri Scandia Stockholm.
Give Me My Son (En villages), directed by John Brunius during 1921 in which he himself starred with Pauline Brunius, Tore Svennberg, Edvin Adolphson, Mona Geiffer Falkner and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, was revised in the United States shortly after its release by The Film Daily during early 1922. It summarized the film by claiming it was, "a new angle on the mother love theme presented in foreign dramatic offering..Handles dramatic moments effectively, but otherwise average...Pauline Bruinius plYs mother role with considerable feeling, suitable cast." before it provided nearly a half page of synopsis, the periodical reported that the film, "gets away from the conventional happy ending. It is not tragic, but unexpected, and not what you think it will be. The denouement is particularly handled, aPnd there are no humorous incidents whatever, so the atmosphere becomes 'heavy' occaisionally.,,the more dramatic moments Re quite effectively handled in a manner that increases the interest to a proper pitch. It is accumulating." Screenwriter Sam Ask appears on screen in the film The Wild Bird (En Vindfagel), which was an adaptation of a play written by S.A. Duse.

The Mill (Kvarnen), directed by Brunius during 1921 had starred Helene Olsson, Klara Kjellblad and Ellen Dall, it having been photographed by Hugo Edlund. The screenwriter Sam Ask also appears in the film, which was an adaptation of a novel penned by Karl Gjellerup. Author Tommy Gustafsson imparts the thematic structure to the film in Swedish Film during a chapter titled Travellers as a Threat in Swedish film during the 1920's. "Kvarnen's rendering of good and evil takes place on two levels. First with an overt symbolism, the filmmakers let a black cat name Pilatus follow Lise wherever she goes, while Amraenta, on the other hand is followed by a tame roe deer. Second, the dark haired Lise is portrayed as a sexually alluring woman with earrings and unbuttoned blouses where we are even able to get a glimpse of seductively bare shoulders and even cleavage. The blond Amrante on the other hand is portrayed as a fairy tale like and innocent character throughout the film."

     Pauline Bruinius during 1921 wrote and directed the films Lev Livet lee de and Ryggskott, both films of shorter legnth, running under a half hour and both starring Frida Winnerstrand, the photographer for both films having been Carl Gustav.

     The author of Greta Garbo: A Divine Star, David Bret, claims that two films directed by John Bruinius that are lost, there being no surviving print of either film, both were films in which Greta Garbo under the name of Greta Gustaffson, had appeared as an extra, whereas, previously, the present author would have only thought to credit her as being in the first film, Soldier of Fortune (En lyckoriddare, 1921), in which she appeared on the set with her sister, Alva. Interestingly enough, Robert Payne, author of The Great Garbo is also among the modern biographers that attribute an uncredited contribution on the part of Greta Garbo to the film, his having noted that she can be seen in the film for well over a full minute.

     Author Jan Olsson recently noted that when Skandia had merged with Swedish Biograph during 1919, one business consideration had been increasing its international market, which would stand to reason as the Danish film industry which had exported was then at a standstill. Olsson advances that it was with an interest in exporting film to foreign markets that the film Karleckens Ogen (Eyes of Love, A Scarlet Angel), directed by Brunius in 1922, had been given a script with a story that transpired in Russia, "Brunius's film featured luxurious cosmopolitan nightclub settings and an intrigue brimming with crimes and passions leading up to redemption of sorts." Brunius co-wrote the film with Sam Ask and it started Pauline Brunius, Karen Winther and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson. The cinematographer to the film was Hugo Edlund. David Bret, author f Greta Garbo: Divine Star, lists Greta Garbo as having appeared in the film Scarlet Angel as an extra and that the film itself is lost, there being no surviving prints of the work. Writing about the global distribution of Swedish silent film, Sweden as transnational, or reluctantly transnational cinema, scholar Laura Horak chronicles the efforts of producer Nils Bouveng, "While some Swedes blamed international audiences for their lack of sophistication, SF was determined to win these audiences over. The company responded to these reports by making a spate of urban, cosmopolitan films, including 'Erotikon', 'The Eyes of Love' ('Karlekens Ogen' ('The Eyes of Love', John Brunius, 1922) and 'Karusellan' ('The Carousel', Dimitri Buchowetski, 1923)." In light of The exterior silent scene of the the Golden Age of Swedish Film quickly having transferred to the interior dialogue scene of Gustaf Molander after the advent of sound, Horak endearingly adds that during that period, before traveling to the United States, silent director Victor Sjostrom starred well known British actors to make his audiences more international.

     Forsyth Hardy evaluated the directing of John Bruinius. in his volume Scandinavian Film, "Inside the studio, Brunius was less successful, but his broadly handled spectacles made a contribution to the Swedish cinema which was noted with respect abroad." 

     Actress Mary Johnson, who had previously acted under the direction of George af Klerker and Mauritz Stiller, returned to the screen to act under the direction of John Brunius in 1923 for the film "Johan Ulfstjerna", photographed by Hugo Edlund, in which she starred with Einar Hanson, Anna Olin and Berta Hilbert. The film included scenes shot on location in Finland. The screenplay had been adapted by Carlo Keil-Moller from a play by Tor Hedberg. To lend a sense of the film as a vehicle for the actress author Forsyth Hardy has written, "Brunius could work effectively on a large canvass." John Wengstrom, of the Swedish Film Institute, found that the sentiment was echoed by Gosta Werner, whom he quotes as having claimed the film by John Bruinius, When first theatrically released, was o e of his “earliest John W. Bruinius also directed the film "Best of All" in 1923.

     John Bruinius during 1924 brought the film Maid Among Maids (En piga bland Piga) to Swedish film audiences. Photographed by cinematographer Hugo Edlund it starred Margit Manstad, Magda Holm, Esther Halling and Halling Lennartsson.

     John Brunius in 1925 directed the film Charles XII (Karl II) starring Mona Martenson and Pauline Bruinius. Photographed by Hugo Edlund, it's screenplay was written by Hjalmar Bergman and Ivar Johansson. Many of the scenes of Bruinius's film were shot on the actual historical locations and battle sites. It is in fact listed as having been produced by Historik Film. As is reflected in the list of actor and actresses in the credits of the film, it was one of the most expensive films to have been made in Sweden up until that time. It was a year during which screenwriter Hjalmar Bergman was still corresponding with Victor Sjostrom and during which he had written to Mauritz Stiller, to whom he mentions Sjostrom, Sjostrom's wife, Edith Erastoff and the actress Greta Garbo, or "Garbo" rather. During that year's correspondence he only briefly mentions Mona Martenson, but does in fact more than twice. Although he attributes Hjalmar Bergman with an "imaginatively written screenplay", A. Kwaikauski, author of Swedish Film Classics gives an estimation of the content, and the thematic narrative, or thematic distribution perhaps, of the film, "Brunius did not overcome the danger of excessive trappings. The spectacular and vigorous battle scenes are not matched by the intimate sequences, which are conventional scenes of court intrigue. The film is impressive in size, but essentially illustrative and lifeless."

     John Brunius again collaborated with screenwriter Ivar Johansson during 1926 to bring the film Tales of Ensign Stal (Fredrick stalls Sanger) to the screen. Hugo Edlund was the cameraman to the film. Appearing in the film Gosta Ekman, Edvin Adolphson, Pauline Brunius Elsa Lundqvist and Karin Swanstron.

     Brunius directed the film Gusta Wasa from a screenplay by Ivar Johansson in 1928.
After the advent of sound, John Brunius sought to continue the tradition of Swedish filmmaking by turning to the writing of Norwegian novelist Bjornstjerne Bjornson and an adaptation of the 1860 work "En Gald Gut", photographed in Norway for National Film by Gunnar Nilsen-Vig. The film featured actors Hauk Aabel, Goril Havervold and Tore Foss.
John Bruinius directed two films during 1930, “The Doctor’s Secret” (“Doktorns Hemlighet”), written by Per Stille and starring Pauline Bruinius, Anne-Marie Bruinius and Marta Ekstrom, and “The Two of Us” (“Vi Tva”), in which Ervin Adolsphson appeared as an actor with Margit Manstad and Marta Ekstrom. “The Two of Us” is the first film in which Lisa Froberg appears on screen as an actress.




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Greta Garbo in The Torrent

A suitable story for director Mauritz Stiller, famous Swedish director who just began work under M.G.M. contract is now being sought and will be announced at an early date. Greta Garbo, who has also just arrived in America will be assigned a suitable vehicle sometime this month." -Exhibitor's Trade Review, 1925

During the summer of 1925, Metro Goldwyn advertised Victor Seastrom's "Tower of Lies" with Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney as "Selma Lagerlof's world prize novel with the outstanding personalities of 'He Who Gets Slapped'". Using the front and inside covers of Moving Picture World Magazine, it also advertised "Bardleys the Magnificient", starring John Gilbert as a "colossal production in full technicolor", "Lights of Old Broadway", starring Marion Davies and directed by Monta Bell, and advertised two Cosmolitan Productions, The Temptress, "backed by intensive national publicity promotions of Cosmopolitan Productions, and "The Torrent"- "with Aileen Pringle in a cast of big names". To readers beginning with the recent biography by Robert Dance, Pringle was "displaced" by Greta Garbo.

Author Lucy Fischer, in the paper Greta Garbo and Silent Cinema:The Actress as Art Deco Icon In no way establishes an Art Deco style of filmmaking as opposed to an art nouveau style of painting, although the elements of a modernity, including thematic elements, are certainly present. Fischer sees the film “The Torrent”, essentially a jazz age film and a precursor to the upcoming surprise of precode, as fluctuating between stylistic flourishes. These for Fischer are not inserted inadvertently, but at “heightened moments of the text” and the first “glamour shot” of Greta Garbo “inhabits a modernist space”. It is almost as if the author is implying that the screenwriter worked more closely with the wardrobe department than the scenario department while making her point. It would seem that Fischer is analyzing the shot structure of the film and its camera movement, the photoplay, by changes in what Greta Garbo is wearing rather than by evaluating how the spectator is drawn to the screen by a medium that after art nouveau, Dadaism and ante-bellum needed Art Deco to commercialize in a world apart from Sarah Bernhardt and the poster iconography of Alphonse Mucha. But Fischer brings a point of departure as the subculture of early surrealism lacked popularity in Hollywood- is Art Deco more than set and costume design and is there a corresponding style of acting, if not directing for the “lost generation”?
For a moment, let’s allow our look at Greta Garboin the film be a collection of shots of the new fashions within modernity and transfer theory written about one genre, the Silent Western to another- with the hope of providing a key to her volume on the iconography of Silent Western Film, the content of its mise en scene and typical motifs, author Nanna Verhoeff, in her volume “The West in Early Cinema, before quoting Jacques Derrida,claims to have coined the phrase “archival poetics” as compared and contrasted to other semiotics systems, to narrative poetics or to poetics of gender, much as a “landscape poetics” emerged in the reviews of the silent films of Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom. The author highlights the content of Western Silent films by searchingly for their common physical elements, which presumably at times include Sjostrom’s masterpieces “The Wind” and at times, owing to its historical context, would not. The author writes, “I am to reflect on the connections between objects, discursive systems within which they can be understood and the cultural life in the present within which such ‘readability’ in terms of poetics’ etymological sense of making. The current interest in hypertextual discursive organization will serve as a heuretical metaphor that will help articulate an archival poetics useful for cultural analysis of early screen culture, in other words screening the past.” Needless to say this alone doesn’t place Greta Garbo as an Art Deco figurehead and the volume written by Verhoeff consists of analysis of early silent film independent of the work of Greta Garbo but it places an archival value on the screen prescence of Greta Garbo contingent on the technology of the period and on audience reception that dates genres as having a chronological beginning when they are to emerge- Garbo’s insistence she did not belong to the Vamp iconography. If a dress worn by Garbo, then an article in a time capsule. To see the effect of costume design clearly, one might look at Elizabeth Taylor in the film Cleopatra, where it seems that every cut to a new scene includes Taylor wearing a different gown, adding a aesthetic value to the silence within each scene through numerous visual additions to mine en scene through numerous costume changes.

Greta Garbo arrives from Europe

When refilmed, her hollywood screentest would by filmed by Mauritz Stiller and purportedly spliced into the rushes of Torrent and was then, in turn, seen by Monta Bell, who insisted the script be given to Garbo. Greta Garbo's second screentest had been photographed by Henrik Sartov, who later explained that the earlier test had lacked proper lighting and that a lens he had devised had allowed him to articulate depth while filming her. Cameraman William Daniels had photographed the earlier test. Lillian Gish relates a conversation between her and Sartov where Gish asked him if he could photograph a screentest of Garbo, "Garbo's temperment reflected the rain and gloom of the long, dark Scandinavian winters."

     It skips any personal contact made between its author, Hedda Hopper, and actress Greta Garbo up untill a phone call from Ina Claire during her marriage to John Gilbert when Hopper had been visiting the set of His Glorious Night and, even then, when giving an account of Greta Garbo walking off the set when Arthur Brisbane had stepped on to it, it makes no claim that Hopper had ever spoken to the actress while at contract at M.G.M., but as an autobiography, From Under My Hat, the personal memoir of the events of Hedda Hopper's career in Hollywood, leaves us with a question. Why was Hedda Hopper compelled to include biography about Greta Garbo ? The account Hopper gives is standard and third person, much like the biography provided by John Bainbridge, it seeming to have its origin in the same fan magazines that were prevalent at the time and following their consensus. "In 1926 Lillian Gish," Hopper writes, "brought a Russian cameraman, whose name I've forgotten, to Hollywood from the East. Nobody had seen the work of the Russian. The studio saw some trick slides with which he was said to get effects...He was asked to make tests...So for three days Greta Garbo sat on a high stool while the unknown Russian made tests of her. A director was looking at water scenes to use in his picture 'The Torrent', when accidentally, the test using Garbo were cut in. His producer was sitting beside him. Apologizing nervously, he stopped the projection. 'No, go ahead,' said the director, 'I want to see something.' When they'd been run through once, he called for them to be run again, then jumped up and ran to the front office. 'I want that girl- the one in the tests. I want her for 'The Torrent.'" Hedda Hopper continues her autobiography with scenes from the romance between Garbo and Gilbert which she was also no part of and without personal memory, which is again odd in that the stories belong more properly to fan magazines, for example Photoplay Magazine, which offered a flurry of biography on Stiller and Gilbert between 1932 and 1935, for some reason the fact that Garbo wouldn't grant interviews making her the subject of biographies speculating why she had become a recluse. Hopper in fact calmy writes, "Garbo had no confidantes" at a point when the reader has begun to question when the two women had ever interacted. Under My Hat was published by Hopper during 1952, twenty years after the height of publicity of how the Swedish Sphinx had come to the United States to fall out of love with John Gilbert

      At first Garbo was reluctant to accept a role in the film "The Torrent". Although it was a large role that had been considered for Norma Shearer, whom Bell had directed in the film After Midnight (1921). Mauritz Stiller advised, "It can lead to better parts later." to which Garbo replied, "How can I take direction from someone I don't know?". John Bainbridge writes that in the beginning Garbo spent most of her time with Mauritz Stiller, quoting him as having said, "You will see that something will become of her." It would be ten weeks before the studio would show any marked interest in her, this mostly at the behest of Stiller and in light of his second series of screentests. "She was especially fond of Seastrom's children," Bainbridge writes, "and brought little present to them." Victor Sjostrom's daughter is the Swedish actress Guje Lagerwall. 

     Begnt Forlund notes that the filming of Anna Karenina had at first been thought for actress Lillian Gish, who in Sweden, Greta Garbo had seen the film White Sister. In her autobiography, Gish wrote, "I often saw young Garbo on the set. She was then the protege of the Swedish director Mauritz Stiller. Stiller often left her on my set. He would take her to lunch and then bring her back, and Garbo would sit there watching." John Bainbridge reiterates this while writing on The Torrent, "Stiller did not appear on the set, but every evening he rehearsed Garbo in the next day's scenes, coaching her in every movement and every expression...Stiller delivered Garbo to the studio every morning and called for her every night." He quotes a letter written to Sweden by Stiller, "Greta is starting work for a well-known director and I think she has got an excellant part." Richard Corliss adds, "Though out of her element and seperated from Mauritz Stiller, Garbo gives fine performance, full of feeling and technical precocity. her first Hollywood kiss is one to remember."     Swedish actor Lars Hanson attended the premiere of the film and reflected, "We all thought the picture was a flop and that Garbo was terrible...In our opinion it didn't mean anything." Bainbridge makes the observation that Mauritz Stiller and Victor Seastrom were also at the premiere. He writes, "The picture did perhaps contain a few imperfections, such as Garbo's costumes." As a biographer, Bainbridge is enjoyable to read in one sense, not only for his prose synopsis of the film, but that he plays a guessing game by quoting a Swedish actress who was then in Hollywood without disclosing her name, the reader to wonder if she was in fact Karen Molander, wife of Lars Hanson who journeyed to Hollywood with him. The accuracy of Hollywood reporting during the Twenties, or Jazz Age, on which Bainbridge seems to base his historical references was admittedly referred to by Picture Play magazine and journalist William H. McKegg in Three Sphinxes, which compared Jetta Goudal, Ronald Colman and Greta Garbo, who, as of 1929, were three people that "puzzle Hollywood" It opined, "Of course rumors have been spread bu those who "know". Some say that Garbo was a waitress in one of the open air cafés in the Swedish capital. They add that the poverty and sorrow she underwent made her fearful of life. Only those who have experienced poverty really know hoe cruel human beings can be to one another. some say she was a singer. Who cares?"The subtitle to one section of The Story of Greta Garbo as told to Ruth Biery, published in Photoplay during 1929 reads, "Tempermental of misunderstood". In it Greta Garbo relates the events that led up to her having left the studio for what would only be less than a week, "Then it was for months here before I was to work for Mr. Stiller. I'm r. When it couldn't be arranged, they put me in The Torrent, with Mr. Monta Bell directing. It was very hard work, but I didn't mind that. I was at the studio every morning at seven o'clock and untill six every evening." She goes further explaining that there was a language barrier that would later contribute to Mauritz Stiller being also taken off her next picture, "Mr. Stiller is an artist...he does not understand the American factories. He always made his own pictures in Europe, where he is the master. In our country it is always the small studio." Stiller had in fact written to Sweden to say, "There is nothing here of Europe's culture." It is of note that in regard to Stiller's relationship to the studio, and Thalberg, Lars Hanson has been quoted as having said, "And Stiller, because he could speak hardly any English, wasn't able to explain what he was doing and how to satisfy them.": it was on the set of The Torrent that author Sven-Hugo Borg was introduced to Stiller, who in turn then informed Garbo that he was assigned translator under Monta Bell's direction. In The Private Life of Greta Garbo By Her Most Intimate Friend, Borg recounts that Bell had turned to him and had said of her, "What a voice! If we could only use it." Of the film he notes, "Of course she was constantly with Stiller, spending every possible moment with him; but thought that when the camera's eye was flashed upon her, (that)the picture would decide her fate began, (that) he would not be there terrified her." Borg continued as the interpreter for Greta Garbo untill 1929. 

     Author Richard Corliss remarked upon the performance in the film by Greta Garbo "Though out of her element and separated from Mauritz Stiller, Garbo gives a fine performance. Her first Hollywood kiss is one to remember...There are to be sure moments early in the film when Garbo works too hard with her eyes; overstating emotions rather than expressing them, dropping nuances like anvils, registering filial devotion...but she grows in the role...by the final scenes..she is utterly convincing as an actress and a star." Corliss continues stating that there are flashes of the later Garbo as though she were many-talented and in retrospect it was present but would later develop more fully, "By the end of The Torrent he face seems moPre severely contoured, her eyes more glacially clear, her head lifted upward by the chinstrap of spiritual pride. The phenomena is that of a star creating her own myth within the time-space of a single film." Photoplay magazine quoted Greta Garbo, "Greta Garbo was having her pictures taken by Ruth Harriet Louise. During one of the close up shots her eyes blinked, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, Miss Louise,' Greta apologized, 'But I twinkled.'" The production stills of Greta Garbo during the filming of The Torrent were photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise. Ruth Harriet Louise had also published an early full photograph of Greta Garbo in Motion Picture Classic Magazine during May of 1926. Before photographing Greta Garbo Louise had created her "first published Hollywood image", that of Vilma Banky from the film Dark Angel in the September 1925 issue of Photoplay and during 1926 she contributed a particularly romantic blue-titnted portrait of Pauline Stark and Antonio Moreno to Photoplay from the film Love's Blindness. During 1928 Louise contributed to Screenland Magazine a portrait of Lars Hansen and Lillian Gish, "the lovers in the forthcoming special production The Wind", directed by Victor Sjostrom under the name Victor Seastrom. For those susceptible to the fantasy of Hollywood, it might feel like one of those rare fleeting siI'm at ghtings of Harriet Brown but it in fact that Robert Dance and Bruce Robertson introduce the photographer in their volume Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography. The authors include a photograph of Greta Garbo taken by Ruth Harriet Louise, who had invited her back to her studios for another photo shoot after the filming of The Torrent had come to its completion, late December of 1925. Harriet Brown, now in fact Harriet Brown and company, the owner of the photograph is none other than "senior management and market executive" Scott Reisfield whom, and I quote, "Developed museum exhibit of photographs with the Santa Barbra Museum of Art. The exhibit subsequently was toured to four additional venues. Developed a book published by Rizzoli in conjunction with the museum exhibit." in all honesty, I have not as of yet corresponded with Mr. Reisfield about Greta Garbo, Sven Gustaffson or Guge Lagerwall. 

     The picture of Greta Garbo in a chair seated next to a lion, Garbo photographed outdoors on what at first appears to be a bench and the lion posing with his feet elevated on a log, as it was first published in Motion Picture Magazine during 1926 must have been a publicity test, by a publicity department that may have named her The Swedish Sphinx during the silent era, as it left her not only silent but unidentified, without printing her name; the caption reads, "$10.00 for the best title of this picture."

 

 

     There are twenty three photographs of Greta Garbo taken by the photographer Arnold Genthe in the United States either on July 25, or July 27. Often unseen by the public and for the most part belonging to public domain, the were part of his estate and are presently housed at the library of congress.

     Biographer Norman Zeirold, who used a photograph of Greta Garbo taken by Genthe for the cover of his wonderful volume has written that, "Garbo's plasticity made it possible for her to reflect the fantasies of her screen audiences, in the sense she functioned as a receptacle for the emotions of others." An attempt on the present author to include the subject of Greta Garbo while corresponding with Norman Zierold, now a professor, was mostly unsuccessful. In keeping with the Greata Garbo that was nearly unknown to movies audiences for her personal life off-screen despite its being highly remarked upon by extra-diegetic text, the Garbo that had lurked in the shadows of museum-art-house screenings as a recluse after her retirement, the Garbo that had blindfolded her firing squad as she smoked a cigarrette as though at any time she could be sitting right beside any us us during any of her films while as spectators we made identifications with each interpellated nuance, I added, "These emotional structures are created within each particular film, often by subject and spectator positioning that exploits the combination of tragic seductress, the viewer, and the film's other characters often in relation to her pre-talkie, before sound, body in an objectification of sexual mystery, as when her body within the frame creates space between two other characters in front of the camera, isolating them near a specific visual motif, or when Greta Garbo briefly moves into the emotion of a particular solitude." But then clearly, the relationship between character and landscape and its interaction with subject positioning and or spectatorial positioning can also differ widely from one director to another, almost to the point where it includes stylization, as when comparing the film's of Victor Sjostrom and Carl Th. Dreyer- the relation of character to landscape during the appearances of Greta Garbo is a relation, or inverse relation, to modernity within the object arrangements of mise-en-scene and female sexuality. Louise Lagterstrom of the Swedish Film Institute adorned her writing on the arrival of Greta Garbo in Hollywood, "Mot Hollywood", with a photograph taken in 1924 by Arnold Grenthe, almost reiterating Garbo was photographed extensively, often posing as a photo-model for publicity stills before her deciding to live in self-imposed exile.

It it clearly for emotion that Garbo posed for the soft-focus series of portraits, almost in as much as the close up in film is used to depict the significant detail of the shot. During December 1925, a photograph of greta Garbo by Arnold Genthe was published in Picture Play magazine with the caption From the Land of the Vikings, it announcing that she was the "latest arrival" from Scandinavia, a "statuesque blond, very reserved in manner." Picture Play Magazine during 1927 used a full page photograph taken by Arnold Genthe to figurehead the article Rebellion Sweeps Hollywood, written by Aieleen St. John Brennon, following it within pages by a portrait of Lars Hanson by Ruth Harriet Louise, it's caption noting that he had "amassed a large following since his forceful performance in The Scarlett Letter and now has the title role in Captain Salvation.  

     Picture Play magazine, in a section titled A Confidential Guide to Current Releases, reviewed Ibanez's "Torrent" with "Interesting film introducing the magnetic Swedish actress Greta Garbo to American audiences. Richard Cortez plays the young lover whose mother's influence kills his romance and ruins two lives."

     The entire review of The Torrent in Photoplay runs as follows: "Monta Bell stands well in the foreground of those directors who can take a simple story and fill it with true touches that the characters emerge real human beings and the resulting film becomes a small masterpiece. Such work has he created in The Torrent and for fans who are slightly grown up, this picture will be a visual delight. Greta Garbo, the new Swedish importation is very lovely." To provide a timeline, it appears on the same page as a review of The Devil's Circus (Benjamin Christensen). Tucked away in a later Photoplay issue was a more candid reviewer, "Greta Garbo exerts an evil fascination- on the screen. True, her debut was not auspiciously placed in The Torrent, which is in reality a babbling brook that runs on forever, now-she-loves-him-now-she don't until the end of the film and beyond." The reviewer then complements her as being attractive, surveying her eyes, lips and nostrils in, perhaps, a "gender-specific" paragraph. And yet Eugene V. Brewster began the watching of Greta Garbo on the part of Motion Picture Classic magazine with his own secular view, "At Metro Goldwyn Studios they showed me a few reels of Greta Garbo's unfinished picture. This striking young Swedish actress will doubtless appeal to many but somehow I couldn't see the great coming star in her the company expects." Frederick James Smith continued for Motion Picture Classic with Greta Garbo Arrives, "The newcomer is a slumber-eyed Norsewoman, one Greta Garbo, who seems to have more possiblities than anyone since Pola Negri of Passion...She isn't afraid to act. That she was able to stand out of an infererior story, poorly directed, is more than her credit...The Ibanez story is full of claptrap, including the dam that bursts without having anything to do with the story. Monta Bell tossed it in the film form without any apparent interest." It quickly followed with the article, "The Northern Star, The Screen's Newest Meteor is a Moody daughter of Sweden", written by Alice L. Tildelsey, who decidedly felt more at liberty to Greta Garbo than interviewers that came later. She relates that the actress had said, "I love the sea, yes. It understands me, I think...it is not happy, it is always yearning for something that it cannot have." Garbo purportedly referred to herself as "poor little Sweden girl" during the interview. "Now for my new picture I must learn to dance the tango and to ride the horse." Tidesley refers to Garbo as "a moody young thing, Greta Garbo, with the temperment of the true artist." The article imparts how Greta Garbo was introduced to Mauritz Stiller, who had seen her performing Ibsen and had had her called in to his office. The photograph of Garbo was taken by Ruth Harriet Louise. 

     National Board of Review magazine, although literate, may have remained true to form as it typified the film with, "The story preserves a European atmosphere in which parents still have the least say about their children's marriages." Biographer Richard Corliss fairly accurately assesses Greta Garbo's first of several silent films, "Not only does it prefigure many of the morals and motifs of her later pictures, but it avoids many of those films pirouettes into the ludicrous. All things considered (the times. the material, the studio, The Torrent is a suprisingly adult piece of work." While reading Corliss the reviewer as essayist, there is a slight temptation to see him presenting the synopsis of each story and the characters as being antiquated, that it is a reevaluation of our film and its incidents but, written while it was a given that Garbo was leading a solitary life, it is kept within Garbo being a mystery, that if the stories were outdated, they could be looked at with curiousity and inquiry, as the fantasies they were meant to be, and in that way the reviews of Richard Corliss only contain a hint of being outdated in their being questioning without necessity. To compare and contrast, if Corliss is writing about the versatility of Greta Garbo, John Bainbridge reverberates the sentiment, "What was to become known as the Garbo manner was but faintly discernable in The Torrent, but there were intimations." Bainbridge seems to keep his secret that much of the material for his biography was derived from fan magazines, albeit he conducted interviews. Biographies on Greta Garbo the sensation began to appear, almost in droves, as soon as the actress had spoken in sound film, many explaining how she reached the screen in Hollywood in the first place while adding spoonfuls of data about Mauritz Stiller. This was to nearly culminate in 1938 with Modern Screen's 15 pages of biography, The True Life Story of Greta Garbo, written by William Stewart. It summarized, "The picture was The Torrent, originally slated for Aileen Pringle but given to Garbo as a test of her ablility...It pleased her, but for final praise she awaited Stiller's word. "It is good.', he said, and those three encouraging words were sufficient." In that being bilingual played a part on Stiller's dismissal from M.G.M, there is an interesting quote from John Bainbridge's biography, "Her inability to speak English prevented her, even if she had wished, from mixing easily with the other people on the set. In spare moments at the studio she was being tutored in English by an interpreter who had been assigned to translate her. She also practiced English with her chief cameraman, William Daniels, with whom she struck up a pleasant and lasting acquaintance, 'I didn't teach Garbo to speak English,' Daniels has remarked, 'but we used to talk a lot and I would correct her on certain things. We understood each other, and talked about things we both knew- movie talk."

     Motion Picture News during 1926 gave the title to the film as "Ibanez' Torrent" The Exploitation Angles were given as "Feature Ricardo Cortez and Greta Garbo. Tell patrons about the letter's European success. Bill as strong emotional drama. Stress flood episode." The Production Highlights given for the film included the talent of actress Greta Garbo and "Spectacular Flood scene and unusual climax".
Rilla Page Palmborg, author of the biography The Private Life of Greta Garbo, described the premiere of "The Torrent" in California, "No one noticed Garbo as she and Mr. Stiller quietly slipped into seats at the rear of the dimly lighted house. No one saw them steal out of before the picture was finished. At the first picture Greta Garbo made in Hollywood she set the precedent of never appearing publicly at any of her pictures."

Greta Garbo in The Temptress

Greta Garbo in The Temptress

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. 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 Nd 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 wappp s 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."

Greta Garbo Greta Garbo Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo Flesh

Greta Garbo Love

Greta Garbo Wild

Greta Garbo Woman

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Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo, 1928)

While editor of Film Comment magazine, Richard Corliss signed the dedication of his biography of Greta Garbo, "To My Own Mysterious Lady, who taught me all I know." Apparently, he had met his wife at a Greta Garbo retrospective during 1968. He writes on Garbo in the film, "It's not that Garbo needed roles of majestic tragedy- she certainly got enough of those!- but she should in films as slight as Mysterious Lady (1928) and as substantial as Ninotchka (1939), that she could have fun without sacrificing the sense of fated seriousness that made her roles, and sometimes even her films, something special." The cover for Exibitors Herald and Motion Picture World was literally designed by M.G.M, their having apparently purchSed it as space, as it was still advertising Greta Garbo in War in the Dark against John Gilbert in The Cossacks and Four Walls. Photoplay in its pages from that year added a provocative photo of Greta Garbo seductive, bare shouldered, in a low cut evening dress with the caption, "Who wants movies with incidental sounds? who would be disturbed by the smack of the kiss Conrad Nagel is planting on Greta Garbo's knock in War in the Dark?" Motion Picture magazine may have lacked tact in its review of The Mysterious Lady, "Greta Garbo's latest picture is devoted to disproving those two disagreeable statements of Jim Tully's- that Greta Garbo is anemic and flat-chested. She darts about displaying unwonted vim and vigor and wears a gown that might very appropriately adorned Barbara La Marr. Greta as a beautiful lad spy is too alluring to miss...Conrad Nagel is occupying John Gilbert's usual place besides the couch." The Celluloid Critic from Motion Picture Classic Magazine of 1928 also noted that Gilbert was "conspicuously absent" from the film, leaving us to wonder if there wasn't more interest in his having been replaced, the studio not being able to elicit vamp characters from Greta Garbo and finding other seductresses that would lend themselves to the imagination. "The picture is nothing to rave about. The Scandinavian lady rises far above it in her role as an icy spy of the late war. Her particular assignment is to tempt a susceptible youth to his doom. You see, he has papers...It is an antique yarn dusted off for the occasion but functions fairly well, what with the Garbo woman tempting and tempting and tempting. And it builds a fair line of suspense." Motion Picture News during 1928 wrote, "Whatever Garbo tackles in the line of stories she has the personality and technique to make it interesting...The Mysterious Lady has been done time and again on the screen. it is old of plot that even the merest tyro at picture going can spot it all the way. it is fair enough because the presence of Greta Garbo. Conrad Nagel is opposite her for a change and acts very creditably."
Picture Play Magazine during 1928 included the film in an article entitled "Are the Movies Scorning Love?", written by Edwin Shallert. It wrote, "A love scene that is susceptible of laughter is scarcely an asset to a film, and if Flesh and the Devil did triumph, it was rather because of a strong friendship theme rather than its lush blandishments...the amorous episodes in The Mysterious Lady, which stars Greta Garbo, were visibly shortened following its initial preview. the audience was inclined to titter at certain languorous poses that Greta Garbo and Conrad Nagel assumed. Romantic love interest consequently is subdued in this spy melodrama. Moreso, at least, than in Greta's earlier luxuriating." it is difficult to gather much about the film from the review of it placed in The Film Spectator during 1928, as it seems severe, other than the plot was met with disdain in its treatment, "The main fault with The Mysterious Lady is that it's leading man is made out to be an idiot...It is not customary for Conrad Nagel to play an idiot and he's not convincing at it. of course, Fred Niblo, the director, didn't intend Nagel to be an idiot, but he made him do so many silly things that he became one anyway...Niblo's direction was very good on the whole, the scene where the hero has his commission taken from him being very impressive...Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel have nothing to be desired in the acting line." The absence of John Gilbert from the film had been predicted from the moment Greta Garbo was included in the film. Exhibitor's Herlad reported, "Niblo signs Greta Garbo for War in the Dark. Fred Niblo announced yesterday by arrangement with Louis B. Mayer that Greta Garbo will head the cast of his forthcoming Metro Goldwyn Mayer Special 'War in the Dark' by Ludwig Wolff. he was director of The Temprest in which Garbo appeared some time ago. Bess Meredith is preparing the scenario. John Gilbert will not be in the cast as rumored in Hollywood."
The Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1929 provided a brief synopsis of The Mysterious Lady, directed by Fred Niblo, "Theme: Romantic drama in which beautiful Russina spy falls in love with young Austrian officer. When he discovers her identity, he casts her off, and to get even girl steals valuable army plans. OFficer trails her to Russia and regains plans. Spy gets into trouble when she aides lover, but pair escape across border and back to Austria."

Fred Niblo seemed to have caused what would have been viewed carefully as a wince from fans of Greta Garbo in Screenland Magazine during 1928. He is quoted by the magazine along with others from Hollywood in response to the question of what a vamp at that time was. "A vamp is a girl like Greta Garbo. her mysterious allure is her appeal. her eyes have the look of concealing some emotion. You have the sensation that she is withholding something all the while and that she can never be understood." During the same issue, Fred Niblo acquired a byline for his article Crashing the Gates of Hollywood, which begins with his explaining the difficulty of keeping silent actors on the screen with the coming of sound. It carried a photocaption to an octagonal portrait of Greta Garbo , "Accoring to Fred Niblo, Greta Garbo is 'a blonde personality with a brunette voice.' She has a voice pitched lower than any other woman in pictures."  Greta Garbo
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Greta Garbo in Love

Greta Garbo

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Greta Garbo in Wild Orchids (Sidney Franklin, 1929)

Motion Picture News during 1929 quietly reported, "Clarence Brown will direct Greta Garbo in Heat for M. G.M.", later that month it adding, "Greta Garbo...has just completed The Divine Woman and will soon begin working on a new starring vehicle tentatively titled Heat adapted from an original story by John Colton. Richard Corliss has written, "Wild Orchids is a gorgeous excersize, with soft-focus sunstars glistening off the the actors' silhouettes, and countless tracking shots that give the impression of being an elegant if impotent nose-thumb in the face of the more earthbound talkies...and Wild Orchids is full of the frolicsome play of shadows. As Garbo stands indecisively outside Asther's bedroom door, light suddenly spills over her as the door is opened and his shadow crawls up her body; when he reaches her- and reaches for her, the shadow of his cupped hand falling over her breast- she retreats." Picture Play Magazine reviewed the film with, "Greta Garbo in her best role. Rather slow, but impelled by adult emotions." It later intimated that Greta Garbo was being watched, from no matter how far. In "You'd Never Know Them", A.L. Woodbridge claimed, "Greta Garbo is one of the few stars who looks so different in person, she needs no 'prop' disguise." Photoplay Magazine published, "Wild Orchids will do much for Nils Asther. Here is the role that will push the young Swedish actor up closer to stardom." It described the film with, "a story that proves tropical heat melts all conventions. The scene is java- the details are superb and the picture is a riot for audiences." Film Daily began following the film with the entry Asther Being Groomed, which read, "It looks as if Metro-Goldwyn Mayer are grooming Nils Asther to fill the vacancy that might be created by the departure of John Gilbert from the payroll of that organization. Rumor has it that Gilbert will go to United Artists..,Asther has been assigned the lead opposite Greta Garbo in her next picture Heat." A later entry followed reporting Garbo Title Change Again, "Wild Orchids and not Kiss of The East will be final title for Greta Garbo's new picture." It is not entirely marginal that there are accounts that Nils Asther had met Greta Garbo in 1924, at the Dramatiska Teatern and that he had proposed marriage to her, which she apparently declined- the autobiography of Nils Asther, Narrens jag (Fool's Way/The Way of the Jester was published in Swedish posthumously. If, in 1928, Ruth Bieiry was writing about Nils Asther in Photoplay magazine merely to obtain information about the secretive Greta Garbo, she does in fact show him in a favorable light and was genuinely interested in the actor, "Nils Asther, like Greta Garbo, was trained in the small studios of Sweden. He was accustomed to accept acting as an art rather than a short cut to wealth, fortune or position." 

   Rilla Page Palborg, in a biography titled "The Private Life of Greta Garbo" gave an account of meeting Greta Garbo on the set of "Wild Orchids". It soon become apparent that Greta Garbo would only film on a closed set, beyond anyone questioning whose voice distinctive voiceaccompanied the images. "A few days before she was to leave for Stockholm I talked to Greta Garbo. Our appointment on the set of 'Wild Orchids', then in process of production. She was acting a scene with Lewis Stone, who in the picture was her husband...Stealthily, she slipped out of bed, wrapped in a robe about her slender body, and stole from the room. The scene was taken over and over. Finally she came out and sat down beside me on an old couch that was standing on the edge of the set. 'I guess we can have a few minutes before I continue my struggle on that bed', she said wearily. 'It's almost impossible for me to keep my mind on all this. I did not want to make this picture before I went to Sweden. There is not enough enough time. My mind is running about the shops buying clothes and presents for this one and that one. But the studio made me do it.' " Greta Garbo continued the interview after decling anything for warmth, her denying that the she was cold in the M.G.M studio. "Now that I am really going home I can hardly wait to get there. I will be home for Christmas." Garbo apparently made her first reference to filming in sound in the United States, asking the journalist Palmborg if her accent was acceptable with a hopeful enthusiasm. Palmborg noted earlier that several actors had returned to Europe for just that reason, a heavy accent no matter how bilingual. Plamborg continued, "We talked about Lars Hanson and his wife, who had returned to Sweden. Her face saddened when I mentioned I mentioned her sister, who had died a year after Greta's arrival inHollywood. 'It has been hard to believe that she is really gone. When I go home I will find that it's is true."

     Clarence Sinclair Bull photographed the portrait of Nils Asther that appeared in Motion Picture Magazine. After their review of Wild Orchids there was included a page entitled Home is Where the Arts Is. It read, "It is Nils Asther's conviction that inspiration for his work is not so much to be got from constant mingling with other people as from a communion with himself." 

     Film Daily subtitled its review to the film, "Sexy Garbo Film with Strong Feminine Appeal. Finely Done. should Get Dough." It described the film's actors, " Greta Garbo; alluring and capable; Lewis Stone gives a fine performance and Nils Asther's a handsome Shiek. The three practically carry all the action." It went on to the scenario, Exploitation of Garbo's sex appeal." while crediting John Colton as author and Marion Ainslee and Rith Cummings as having written the titles. Photplay also announced, "This is Greta Garbo's last picture before she departed for Sweden" It claimed that the story created by writer John Colton as enacted by Garbo in Wild Orchids had previously been considered for Lillian Gish. motion Picture Magazpine listed the film as Synchronized (Sound) upon its release while lending it. Recommendation, "Lewis Stone gives his always distinguished performance. And Nils is an actor, and- but see Wild Orchids. To end 1928, Film Daily reported, Garbo Re-Signed, claiming that she had signed a new contract with M.G.M, one that would allow her to go on. vacation before going into effect and speculated with a fair amount of certainty that her first picture on her return would be an adaptation of a novel written by Elinor Glyn. John Bainbridge writes,"When she finished her current film, though, she was coming home for Christmas. Stiller, excited by this piece of news..." He provides an account of Garbo recieving a telegram from Victor Sjostrom, who had been with Mauritz Stiller the previous evening, announcing Stiller having passed away, an unnamed source describing that while on the set, her composure registered and became quiet for a brief moment and that she then continued the scene. "Lars Hanson, who spent untold hours with them in Sweden and in Hollywood, is of the opinion that there existed between them a bond of mutual affection, respect and dependency, but never the normal ties of love."
     Among the several advertisements published by M.G.M Studios which advertised the studio and included the film was on placed in Motion Picture News that reintroduced Greta Garbo. "The most talked about star in pictures! 'Woman in Affairs' built her fame bigger than ever. Next 'Wild Orchids' and it's a throbbing gold-getter." Typical of the studio advertising itself, John Gilbert, Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer and Roman Novorro were included in the multi-page ads, "John Gilbert follows with 'Desert Night'. What a star! They all wanted him! The Big Ones stay with M.G.M."
Well into 1932, as was typical with the fan magazines of the early sound period, Movie Classic provided one of the many published retrospectives, biographies or timelines of the career of Greta Garbo and her silent film, building up the glamour aspect of her having been the enigmatic Swedish Sphinx, which included a look at The Mysterious Lady, "still another leading man, Conrad Nagel. Being married, he is safe from Greta Garbo." The magazine overlooked the marriage of Lars Hanosn to Karin Molander paragraphs earlier, "(Garbo) hailed in the title role of The Divine Woman with Lars Hanson as leading man. Romance with Lars Hanson rumored." If actress Greta Garbo remained eternally silent on the rumor of an affair with Hanson, it would not have seemed out of place, as by the time it had gone to print, Lars Hanson and Victor Sjostrom had both returned to their native country Sweden with their wives. Journalist Harriet Parsons of Modern Screen Magazine looked at the availability of Greta Garbo during 1931. "After her split with Gilbert, Garbo used to see Nils occasionally. They were countrymen and shared in common a moodiness and a love of solitude...There was never more than a casual friendship between them...Nils has since married the woman he loves." While describing the personal life between Greta Garbo and Niks Asther, Parson introduced Sorenson, a blond young Swede that was dating Garbo while in the United States, and "was in love with Garbo. But Garbo wasn't in love with him." She "liked him immensely. Liked not loved." Sorenson returned to Sweden when his pass port had expired.

     As Film Daily scurried for the latest information on the three tone technicolor process and the wiring of movie theaters for sound, Movie Makers making reviewed the cinematography of "Wild Orchids", "The picture opens with a skillful cinematic representation of the confusion and excitement at the departure of a steamer...scenes of the dock and boat dissolve into each other and a moving camera follows the leads...the emphasis on neutral colors helps convey...although there are very few shots with definite photographic contrasts."

     It would appear that during 1929 Greta Garbo was included into what could be considered either the hard cover or the textbooks of that year, but only due to an author writing in a flurry; Hands of Hollywood was printed by Mary Eunice McCarthy and the Photoplay Research Bureau with the subtitle Copyright Applied For as the world waited for Greta Garbo and Lon Chaney to speak. After a brief chapter on The Talers, it discussed The Future of Pictures by paraphrasing the view of Irving  Thalberg, "He also announces that Greta Garbo and Nils Asther, both possessing decided foreign accents, have been resigned by his company under long term contracts. he says that a producer is foolish to release great public favorites in which he has invested millions of dollars for advertising and exploitation and to replace them with comparatively unknown stage players merely because of their trained voice...Greta Garbo's latest picture, "Wild Orchids" (silent) is making a tremendous amount of money and has played Broadway for two splendid weeks." Earlier in the volume, in a section that covered Continuity Writers the author had mentioned the film in regard to the qualifications and duties of writers of adaptations and the knowledge of censorship and their translating to the screen novels or plays that otherwise would be censored, A Woman of Affairs having been milder than its counterpart The Green Hat.

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Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil

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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."
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'."
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." 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 FrancesO 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