Scott Lord: Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (1928, Victor Sjostrom)

"The Divine Woman" directed in the United States during 1928 featured three Swedish Silent Film stars from the Golden Age of Swedish Silent film, two of whom, Victor Sjostrom and Lars Hanson, would soon return to Sweden to mark the advent of sound film. Sjostrom would return to act and only act, in front of the camera rather than behind it. Only one reel of the film survives, it being presumed lost with no other footage of the film surviving other than the fragment.

Bo Florin, Stockholm University, in his volume Transition and Transformation- Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood 1923-1930, looks as a film detective not only to film critics and magazine articles printed during the first run of the film, as I have, this webpage in fact subtitled "Lost Films, Found Magazines", (please excuse the trendy contemporary use of subtitles during peer review) but also to the the cutting continuity script, his finding a specific sequence where Sjostrom uses "a combination between iris and dissolve", one which, as an iris down, fulfills the "classic Sjostrom function of an analogy". There are two other dissolves in the same sequence that are used as transitions, spatial transitions, yet both are taken from different camera distances. It is a contonuity cutting script from which author Bo Florin has found fifty four dissolves that were used in the film. Again, no footage from the scene or the reel it is from survives. One can ask if double exposures were only infrequently published in magazines or advertisements as publicity stills, or even as lobby cards or posters and if modern audiences have ever seen photographs from the scene- Screen Secrets Magazine during 1928, in their Tipping off the Screen's Secrets, provided a photograph of Victor Sjostrom filming "Lars Hanson and some French soldiers from the hurricane deck of a bus".

Greta Garbo biographer Norman Zierold writes, "Garbo asked for, and got, Victor Seastrom as her director in 'The Divine Woman'." Journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, in The Private Life of Greta Garbo fulfills the search for Lost Film, Found Magazines when giving an account of being on the set of 'The Divine Woman' for a rare interview with Greta Garbo, giving a description of what what on film in a film we at presenent no longer have. "There came a shy little French girl and a young officer walking slowly down the street. They paused in a doorway. The officer asked a frowsy inkeeper for lodgings. The girl looked up shyly at the officer. She hesitated a moment, raised up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Then she hurried past him up the stairs. 'Cut' shouted the director." The director was in fact Swedish Silent Film director Victor Sjostrom, Greta Garbo leaving the set in a high collared cape to bring journalist Rilla Page Palmborg to her dressing room. The commodity Garbo at that time? The journalist had obtained the interview not to ask about Lars Hanson, Victor Sjostrom or the upcoming film "The Divine Woman", but was admittedly there to ask Garbo about her tabloid romance with actor John Gilbert. The dressing room was small and on wheels and Garbo politely expressed concern if they both would fit into it. Greta Garbo answered the question regarding her intentions of marriage with "it is only a friendship. I will never marry. My work absorbs me. I have time for nothing else. But I think Jack Gilbert is one of the finest men I have ever known." There would seem a contradiction between the onscreen Garbo who 'nearly invented the torrid love scene' and the extratextural discourse of pursuing the reclusive hermit Garbo everywhere- oddly enough Palmborg claims that the relationship between Garbo and Lars Hanson and his wife Karin Molander was more professional than social although Hanson and Garbo arrived from Sweden at the same time with Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. Swedish Silent Film actress Karen Molander explained, " 'Garbo never had any friends with whom she chummed around in Stockholm.' said Mrs. Hanson. 'When we knew her she was devoted to Mauritz Stiller. He seemed to be the only person with whom she would associate.' "

Paul Rotha, in his volume The Film Till Now, commented on the topic that would be taken up by Bo Florin during this century, the artistic differences between the films made by Victor Sjostrom for Svensk Filmindustri, Stockholm and for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Hollywood. "But Sjostrom has ceased to develop. He remains stationary in his outlook thinking in terms of his early Swedish imagery. He has recently made little use of the progress of cinema itslef. 'The Divine Woman', although it had the Greta Garbo of 'The Atonement of Gosta Berling' had none of the lyricism, the poetic imagery of the earlier film."

In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines- gleaning conceptions about what appeared on the screen in the silent films that have been lost by finding magazine articles, pressbooks, lobby cards, movie posters and other extratextural discourse documenting the film's first run, Gary Cary, Museum of Modern Art, in his volume Lost Film views the photoplay of "The Divine Woman" as being less autobiographical than it was presented. "The play upon which the film was based on was reportedly inspired by the life of Sarah Bernhardt. The movie, however, departs radically from both play and Madame Bernhardt's life. The leading role of Marianne was played on stage by Doris Keane, a popular favorite of the period."

Photoplay Magazine during 1928, in its The Shadow Stage pages, offered a review of the film, "A Story based on the life of Sarah Bernhardt and played by Greta Garbo as the Divine Sarah Herself" while adding the provision, "The interest centers in the acting of Miss Garbo and Lars Hanson, her soldier lover, rather than the story itself." Perhaps after the audience reception of Garbo and Gilbert having had been being a phenomenon both onscreen and off, using romance as a genre commodity commercially suggested using the life of the French theatre actress as primarily a backdrop for the dynamic. Victor Sjostrom and Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Temptress

Greta Garbo in The Torrent
Silent Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo photographed by Ruth Harriet Loiuse

Journalist Katherine Albert during 1928 wrote,"You have seen Ruth Harriet Louise's name almost as often as you've seen Greta Garbo's. It is usually printed in small type under the photographs of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stars. Ruth is the twenty-one-year-old portait artist and the only woman photographer in the business."

Greta Garbo

Silent Greta Garbo





Silent Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Not incidentally, to show the amount of exposure in the printed media that Greta Garbo the recluse did recieve, during 1931 an new fan magazine entitled Movie Mirror launched its first issue, Volume One, Number One. A photocaption read, "The first picture in a new magazine--it must be Greta Garbo.

Greta Garbo


Greta Garbo



Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Remade by Greta Garbo: Camille

Studio manager of Rasunda was relegated to Vilhelm Bryde during 1923. Author Forsyth Hardy Gaines an account, "His influence was most clearly seen in 'Damen med Kamelioarna', a static, theatrical adaptation of the Camille theme, directed by Olof Molander. The film derived some distinction from the delicately composed interiors...a reversion to a theatrical style of filmmaking quite foreign to the Sjostrom-Stiller."

For those familiar with the history of Danish Silent Film Lady of the Camellias, (Kameliadamen, Camille) adapted from the novel by Dumas, was filmed by Viggo Larsen, who starred in front of the camera as well as creating from behind it, as he was often won't to do, the film also starring Oda Alstrup, Robert Storm Petersen and Helga Tonnesen. It was produced by Nordisk Film and Ole Olsen and it's cinematographer was Axel Graatkjaer Sorensen.


The Divine Bernhardt that was immortalized as a model for Alphonse Mucha exists, the plays that Louis Mercanton adapted for the screen, Jeanne Dore (1915, three reels), starring Madame Tissot with actress Sarah Bernhardt and shown in the United States by Bluebird Photoplays, and Adrienne Lecouvveur (1913, two/three reels), do not, and belong to the province of Film Preservation, if not Lost Films, Found Magazines, a vital part of From Stage to Screen, the transition of the proscenium arc to visual planes achieved by film editing and composition having been relegated to desuetude. By all accounts there still is a copy of Sarah Bernhardt performing Camille on film.

Greta Garbo is quoted by Sven Broman as having said,"I know he courted Sarah Beenhardt and wanted to write plays for her...But Strindberg managed to get Sarah Bernhardt to do a guest performance in Stockholm in La Dame aux Camelias at the Royal Dramatic Theatre."


Camille (J. Gordon Edwards, 1917, five reels) starring Theda Bara is, like The Divine Woman (Victor Seastrom), a lost silent film, there being no surviving copies of it. Motography not I coincidentally revealed, "Theda Bara in a sumptuous picturization of Camille is the latest announcement of William Fox to the public...Theda Bara as the unhappy Parisian girl who sacrifices herself on the altar of convention, has surpassed all her previous work. This production...Parisian life is followed in every detail so that the atmosphere of the story fits admirably with the acting in it." Surepetitiously, Motion Picture News used the exact same wording, it concluding with, The tears it caused were genuine and the emotions it stirred were deep." J. Gordon Edwards directed Theda Bara in several films for the Fox Film Corporation during 1917 which are now lost, with no surviving copies, including the films "Cleopatra" (ten reels), "Heart and Soul" (five reels), "Her Greatest Lobe" (five reels) and "The Rose Blood" (six reels), as well as the lost films "Under the Yoke" (five reels), "When a Woman Sins" (seven reels) and "The Forbidden Path" from 1918.

Most significant may be that the script to Poor Violetta (Arme Violetta, 1920) was written by Hans Kraly, who later emigrated to Hollywood; directed by Paul L. Stein, it was released by Paramount as The Red Peacock, with the alternate title Camille, purportedly only loosely an adaptation of the novel by Dumas. The film is thought to be lost, with no surviving copies.  in her autobiography Memories of a Star, actress Pola Negri describes filming in Europe, "Even before Hemmingway and Fitzgerald made The Lost Generation internationally famous, it was a city intent on losing itself. Jazz was beginning to become a rage in all the little chic clubs.... When production began on Camille, I was ready for it. Nightlife had served its purpose. The mixture of wild gaiety and sense of loss which had been so much part of the last few weeks gave me fresh insights into the character I was to portray. Certainly, the doomed tubercular Marguerite Gautier would not have felt out of place in Berlin at the dawn of the twenties. My sojourn among those people who lived on the opposite side of the clock had been a useful and pleasant interlude, but it was now over." Negri, who would leave for Warsaw after filming Camille had been writing about a city that would soon embrace Expressionism and where Asta Nielsen that year had been filming an adaption of Hamlet as a Silent Film.
In the United States The Film Daily during 1922 reviewed the film by claiming it had "No Visible Drawing Power in this Except for Sensation".  While giving a brief synopsis it wrote, "as for the story, it is certain to offend the decency of some and practically everyone with any sense of refinement. There isn't anything very tasteful or entertaining in this depiction of a series of liaisons even though you can hardly blame the girl for running away from her drunken step father...Another matter which you will do well to consider in connection with this picture is the type of patron you cater to." Their sentiment was echoed by Exhibitor's Herald magazine, who saw Pola Ngeri in the film as depicting a woman who was " that of the tennis-ball tossed lightly from one gentleman's racquet to another" to which it appended, " This is made abroad and their standards are not ours."

Using a still where the two lovers were in embrace on a couch, reminiscent of John Gilbert and Greta Garboin Flesh and the Devil, captioned with "Armand pours out his love to the adored Camille, Picture Play magazine during 1927 introduced the nine reel film starring Norma Talmadge and Gilbert Roland as "the latest screen version of the Dumas' masterpiece." MPotion Picture magazine noted that it was a film in which Norma Talmadge would wear her hair bobbed, the studio having reported to the magazine that it would be an adaptation located in the then present day Paris of Gerturde Stien, Fitzgerald and Hemmingway and that the cast of the film would also include Lilyan Tashman. Photoplay reviewed the film with,"Norma Talmadge shifted the background to the present day. This change seems to have affected the story itself but slightly. 'Camille has one fault. it is too long...Rather actory but worth IT. Super-sexy stuff this." Amateur Movie Makers magazine looked at Niblo's camerawork during 1927, noting that the film as having a Titleless Start. "Eliminating the usual series of opening titles, 'Camille' opens with a series of swift dissolves which move from the general to the specific, from a shot down to a mass of moving umbrellas, to a salient bit of portraiture of the auctioneer hawking Camille's effects."


The 1915 screen version of Camille was scripted by Frances Marion. the five reel film starred Clara Kimbal Young under the direction of Albert Cappellani. There is thought to be a lost film from 1912 starring actress Gertrude Shipman that was based on Dumas' work possibly one reel in legnth.

Greta Garbo John Gilbert


Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in Love

Greta Garbo photographed

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Single Standard (1929, Marsh)

John Bainbridge gives an account of Greta Garbo having returned from Sweden in which the studio and public had expected her to arrive in Los Angeles and her instead having gotten off the train early to rendezvois with John Gilbert. "He had thought that things would turn out as the do in the movies, with the screen's two great lovers united in holy matrimony...According to Gilbert, Garbo had told him, 'You are a very foolish boy, Yacky. You quarrel with me for nothing. I must do my way. But we need not part.' It was on location of the film The Single Standard (eight reels) that Greta Garbo had learned of the marriage of John Gilbert to Ina Claire, "an event that came as a considerable suprise to the entire movie colony" (Bainbridge). His account includes a reporter finding Garbo on the set between two scenes and his showing her the headline, "'Thank you', she said. The reporter began pressing her with questions about her reaction to the news. 'I hope Mr. Gilbert will be very happy,' she said, and walked away." Picture Play magazine reviewed The Single Standard with, "One of the most brilliantly searching moments of acting ever seen in my fifteen years' of observation of the screen occurs in The Single Standard. It is furnished by Greta Garbo. She washes her hands, then washes her hair...Only she could make the story matter, or give it even ephemeral conviction."
It seems apparent that M.G.M. Had avoided the publicity of full page magazine advertisements for the Greta Garbo film The Single Standard and preferred using full page advertisements advertisizing the studio and its vast array of stars, mostly in a more stars in the firmament fashion, one page in 1929 reading It's Just the Beginning of MGM's Deluge of Dialouge Delights and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Your Rock of Gilbralter. It was a full page age in which the photo caption beneath Greta Garboread,"Gorgeous Greta in The Kiss with Conrad Nagel, Greater by far than The Single Standard." This may have in fact been impelled by the quickly advancing coming of sound film, if at all by the fickle contacts of Garbo or Gilbert. During 1929, Exhibito's Herlad and Motion Pictur World listed The Single Standard in a paragraph of films designated as Synchronized Pictures with Sound Effects as differentiated with those listed as Pictures With Talking sequences or Entirely of Dialouge. An advertisement during 1929 in Exhibitor's Herald merely read M.G.M The Important Company while listing the actors and actresses only by name with the working title of their current production, their frequently being instances that the titles would be changed later. With the name of the company was merely the acknowledgement of Lon Chaney in While the City Sleeps, John Gilbert in The Devil's Mask, and Greta Garbo in The Single Standard. Fim Daily of 1929 appealed to exhibitors and its moviegoing readers before providing a synopsis of the film. "Garbo splendid and spends this in for big dough. Story trite and trashy. Greta deserves better." it concluded, "It sounds like a lot of blah in print. That's exactly what it is. Garbo is too fine to waste on such stuff."



Hollywood Filmograph reviewed Greta Garbo in The Single Standard during 1929, "Adele Rogers St. John takes a sort of languid jolt at social conventions in her Single Standard, using Greta Garbo and Nils Asther to propound the doctrine. The theme appears to have been built rather than created and should hardly carry far in the external fitness of things...The Garbo fans will surely like her in this new role- a role in which she shows a little more fervor (not of the bent back kind) than usual...The Single Standard should not be a tornado at the box office." Motion Picture News added, "the story by Adela St John Rogers is highly sophisticated and in the main only suited for the big city houses; in the smaller towns it will appeal to the younger generation but the elder will undoubtedly frown on its altogether too free an exposition of sex will the heroine maintaining the right that a single standard of conduct applies to women as well as men and proceeding to put her theory into effect....Greta Garbo appears a little too old to be the typical flapper that would tackle a sex problem of this sort in the earlier positions of picture." Picture Play Magazine waited until 1930, "Brilliant acting by Greta Garbo although the story is not an inspiration. Arden Stuart attempts to live her own life freely, but conventional mother love dispels her theories."

"The girls go into long trousers. For the sea scenes of 'The Single Standard', Greta Garbo wore flannel trousers with a plain, tuck in sweater and sea going canvas shoes."  Picture Play magazine in 1929 ran the caption "Only self-expression draws Greta Garbo, for she is indifferent to fame and to the luxury that comes with stardom." In regard to her being versatile, it added yet another photo caption,"Greta Garbo portrays the torments of love, and little else."

Scott Lord Silent Film: Greta Garbo in Love (Edmund Goulding,1927)

Norman Zierold, in Garbo, his autobiography of Greta Garbo, mentions the willingness of M.G.M. to increase its budget on the films of Greta Garbo now that she had previously starred in three earlier films. The studio had originally slated Dmitri Buchowetsky to direct and Richard Cortez to star in the film "Love". "On seeing the early rushes the studio heaads were dissatisfied. They decided to scrap the footage, replace Buchowetsky with Edmund Goulding and Cortez with John Gilbert....The cost of the shifting of forces was nearly a quarter of a million dollars."

During May of 1927, the periodical Film Daily ran the announcement Goulding Directing Love, "Dimitri Buchowetski has been replaced by Edmund Goulding as the director of Anna Karenina, in which Greta Garbo, will portray the title role. Release title 'Love'."

The film was photographed by William Daniels.

Sven-Hugo Borg chronicled his having observed John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, "They were cast as lovers in 'Love' (Anna Karenina), and out of that picture came not only another screen triumph for Garbo, but the flowering of what I believe to have been the only real love of her life." He continues, "I believe with all my heart that John GIlbert is the only man who ever touched the deep wells of passinate emotion which lie buried in the breasts of Garbo." Borg alludes to Garbo not having to wanted marry Gilbert and of her keeping the details of the romance from Mauritz Stiller. "She was in the arms of Jack Gilbert when I first saw her. The air was surcharged. The atmosphere glowed."
The periodical Film Daily during 1927 imparted, "Svend Borg, interpreter for Greta Garbo, has been assigned to the cast of "The Bugle Call". John Gilbert during 1927, in addition to "Love", also appeared in the films "Twelve Miles Out" (eight reels) directed by Jack Conway and starring Eileen Percy and "Man, Woman and Sin" (seven reels), directed by Monta Bell and starring actress Jeanne Eagles. Greta Garbo in Love silent Film

The extratextural discourse that included fan magazines exploiting the Garbo-Gilbert affair during 1927 alluded to it while reviewing the performance of John Gilbert in "Man, Woman and Sin" (seven reels), which the periodical Photoplay saw as being of interest because of the actor and actress being paired together, but concluded, "Miss Garbo needn't worry over Miss Eagles", it having purported that the film and part played by the actress was tailored to substitute for Greta Garbo ie. it being a John Gilbert vehicle in that stars as commodity fulfill the audience expectations of genres as they develop. "Monta Bell knows his city room. After that the film disintegrates into cheap melodrama. "Man, Woman and Sin", by virtue of it being lost silent film is included in the volume Lost Films written by Gary Carey, Museum of Modern Art. A comeback film for which actress Jeanne Eagles was "extrememely well recieved", Gary Carey writes, "Few of her films have been preserved and thus has been lost the record of the most heralded actress of the decade."

While situating John Gilbert in a genre that contained torrid love scenes with the headline "Bell in Hot Tilt Over Seductive Siren", the periodical Moving Picture World traced the work of director Monta Bell after he taken Greta Garbo from a developing genre driven by the Vamp character to a genre of driven by the quest of two isolated lovers, with actress Jean Eagles providing "Much interest, especially among women." Moving Picture World chronicled the now lost film with "The director Monta Bell- he wrote the story too- has his job cut out for him in guiding his two lovers through the maze of their emotional eruptions for the least padding here, or the meerest off-shade there would have resulted in extracting the sauce of plausibility from the seasoning."
The film was photographed by Percy Hilburn. The periodical Close-Up sheds some light upon technique searched for by film detectives of lost silent films,"Use is made of a mix consisting of a fade-out and iris-in. With brightly lit futuristic sets, this effect has a certain'chic', like a neat fashion plaque from 'Vogue'." Bell may have been aiming for the moderninity later present in the Greta Garbo-John Gilbert film "The Single Standard".

Scott Lord Silent Film: Greta Garbo in The Temptress (Fred Niblo, 1926)

The periodical Motion Picture News during 1926 the filming of "Temptress" with a review entitled "Greta Garbo in the Title Role of 'The Temptress'. It read,"Greta Garbo, Swedish actress, will have the title role in Cosmopolitan's production of 'The Temptress, which will be a Metro Goldwyn Mayer release directed by Mauritz Stiller. She is now working in 'Ibanez' The Torrent'." Greta Garbo had in fact signed to do the film on the condition that Stiller was to direct.

The periodical Motion Picture News during 1925 announced that Mauritz Stiller had been slated to direct "The Temptress" by imparting that he had been brought to the United States by Louis B. Mayer. "Stiller won wide reputation in Europe for his productions." Exhibitors Herald listed the filming of "The Torrent" as being in progress with Monta Bell directing Greta Garbo, Mauritz Stiller "to direct the Temptress".

Biographer Norman J. Zeirold, in his volume Garbo, describes Mauritz Stiller's idea behind filming Greta Garbo, "Only swift disaster lay shead. Stiller wanted to turn the standard story of a make-enslaving vamp into a richly embroidered spectacle. And he wanted to film it in his own manner. He ordered MGM's vast eschelons of production assistants off the film. He began shooting, not in sequence, but as the spirit moved him as he had done in Europe. Thalberg looked at the rushes and could make no sense of the jumbled images."

Author Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film, curtly, only briefly mentions that Mauritz Stiller was removed as director of the film after a disagreement with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Biographer William Stewart, in The True Life Story of Greta Garbo gives an account purporting that Mauritz Stiller "had not yet mastered the American method of making pictures. Handling crowds gave him trouble and his lack of English made every move difficult." Hollywood writer Bosley Crowther, in his biography of Louis B. Mayer entitled The Hollywood Rajah writes that Mauritz Stiller "proved to be too finicky and slow" and "difficult", a type of director that "were now being got out of the studio", but adds that before the filming of "The Temptress" was completed, Greta Garbo had met and fallen in love with Jack Gilbert. Although Garbo and Gilbert met during 1926, it seems that Crowther is approximating and according to Clarence Brown, her director, Garbo and Gilbert met on the set of the third film Greta Garbo had made in the United States.

Ruth Biery, who writes "I have seldom met anyone more timid than Garbo' became known to readers of fan magazines as the first biographer to introduce Greta Garbo with an interview from New Year's Eve 1927 that resulted in her appearing in three issues during 1928, Garbo the May Photoplay cover. Ruth Biery returned to the subject of Garbo and Stillerfour years later. "They cast her in 'The Temptress' because Mauritz Stiller insisted upon it. He was to direct it. He directed the production in a way that would work to the advantage of his protoge. Garbo was tall. Antonio Moreno, the actor, was not so tall. The directed insisted that he wear his hair pompador fashion to make him look taller. He put him into boots- undoubtedly to make Garbo's feet look smaller. Moreno resented his favoritism. There was a battle and Stiller lost. He was removed from the picture. This was Garbo' first experience with studio politics. Because of her, Stiller lost his job. Yet it was her friend Stiller who insisted on her being in the picture. She was bewildered, crushed." Biery continued, "She may have loved Stiller. I do not know. I do know she enshrined him. When she talked to me of Stiller her eyes filled with tears, her entire body trembled with emotion."

The first instance of Greta Garbo granting an interview to journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, author of The Private Life of Greta Garbo, was on the set of "The Temptress". " 'I was frantic when Mr. Stiller was taken from the picture,' she said. 'It is difficult for me to understand direction through an interpreter. Everything over here is strange and different. And this studio is so large it confuses me.' "

The True Life Story of Greta Garbo by William Stewart continues, "The second disaster to occur during the filming of 'The Temptress' was the death of Greta's sister." Within a fortnight, two events had occurred which seemed not to have shaken the on-screen Greta Garbo personna, or the need to ostensibly create an offscreen Garbo, as though they went unnoticed within the mystery around the recluse she seemed to be building- in fact the following month an article was published entitled "The Mysterious Stranger". Biographer John Bainbridge wrote if the passing of Greta Garbo's sister Alva 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." Silent Film actress Lillian Gish, in her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, writes, "I heard one day that she had lost her only sister and I sent flowers and a note. Garbo came to thank me but she couldn't speak English. Tears came to her eyes. I couldn't speak Swedish so I put my arms around her and we both cried." In Sweden, before coming to America, Greta Garbo had appeared with her sister Alva Gustafsson during 1921 in a scene which takes place in a tavern in the film "A Fortune Hunter" (En Lyckoriddare, John Brunius) starring the beautiful Mary Johnson, actress Hilda Forsslund, Gosta Ekman and Gull Natorp.

In The Private Life of Greta Garbo, journalist Rilla Page Palmborg wrote, "The scene had changed. It was Garbo not Stiller that M.G.M wanted. Garbo made even a greater sensation in The Temptress than in The Torrent....Passion glowed whenever Greta Garbo appeared on the screen. Her beauty flashed with a singular appeal. She was proclaimed a great actress...... But Greta declared she knew nothing of the technique of acting. That for the time being she 'was' the person in the picture. She did not know how she got certain effects. She did not know why she did things the way she did them."

Motion Picture News announced the theme of "The Temptress" as being "drama of tragic love in which youth encounters disaster through charms of siren before he finds happiness". The periodical The Moving Picture World reviewed Greta Garbo in the film before she later refused to play The Vamp on screen in a developing genre she left for the genre of "screen lovers","A Modern embodiment of the fabled sirens and lorelei is the role that gives this picture its title, and that it would seem that its author, the celebrated Belasco Ibanez has sought for in this character to epitimize the power of feminine beauty to bring men on to destruction".
The periodical Photoplay Magazine added a brief review of the performance of Greta Garbo in the film, "The Ibanez story is forgiven and forgotten when Greta Garbo is in the cast. Greta is a show herself." Photoplay Magazine soon reiterated its sentiment with, "Whie this Vincente Belasco story is crammed full of melodramatic action-much of it preposterous-Greta Garbo makes the proceedings not only believabke, but compelling. Miss Garbo scored in 'The Torrent', also a messy Ibanez tale, but it takes 'The Temptress' to prove definitely her abilities....'The Temptress' is all Greta Garbo'. Nothing else matters."

After having portrayed The Seductress, The Vamp, in two films in Hollywood, the next film Greta Garbo would make would encapsulate her, on and off screen, as belonging to the genre of "screen lovers".

Silent Film

Greta Garbo Victor Seastrom

The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters ; Greta Garbo and Victor Seastrom

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom

Silent Film

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1929)