Love

Back in the day this silent version of Anna Karenina was all the rage because in that year that talkies made their debut, the film was part of the famous Greta Garbo/John Gilbert group that was passionately daring for its time. That scene where Gilbert after helping a lady in distress in the snowy Russian winter, when they get to shelter and she takes off the hoodie on her parka and Gilbert does a triple take at Garbo's beauty is still one of the best love at first sight scenes in the history of cinema.

The passionate sparks from Garbo and Gilbert still thrill many. But ninety years after Tolstoy's novel got the full MGM tratment we can get real critical over the happy ending the film got. There was a more realistic ending apparently filmed for foreign markets. But I can only critique what I see.

Still for me the best version of Anna Karenina was the one Vivien Leigh did in 1948 which was closest to Tolstoy's work. The sound remake that Garbo did with Fredric March as Count Vronsky is better than this one. The ending there is tragic, but there is a postscript softening of Vronsky's character.

Fans of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert should still like this. But Tolstoy purists will be disappointed.

As I have stated before and often in my reviews, I don't care whether or not a film adaptation is faithful to its source material; my only requirement is that it be good and stand on its own two feet. Love (1927) mostly does this; I haven't read Anna Karenina, though I am familiar with the basic outline of the plot. Love hits the high points of the story, though it does make the relationship between Anna and Vronsky more a case of two soul mates finding one another than what those two characters are in the novel.

Garbo is luminescent as Anna. She was not only gorgeous, but she could communicate such depth and soul despite being featured in so many standard melodramas. Gilbert does good and is ardent as the romantic lead, but Garbo steals the show. As is usual with most 1920s MGM melodramas, the production is lavish and pretty. My biggest issue is that the story is incredibly rushed; everything moves so quickly and it feels like scenes were even lost or snipped. Nothing develops gradually. Aside from that problem, Love is a nice romantic drama, though if you want your Garbo-Gilbert fix, you're better off with Flesh and the Devil or A Woman of Affairs.

On the heels of "Flesh and the Devil," MGM naturally teamed up the two highly-publicized romantics once again in an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel 'Anna Karenina' with the release of November 1927's "Love." Greta Garbo is married to an old rich sod. When she meets Vronsky (John Gilbert), a captain in the Russian Army, her Anna slowly warms up to and eventually embraces his love. Instead of a duel when her husband finds out about their relationship, he shuts the door on her as well as forbids her to see their son ever again.

"Love," originally with the working title 'Heat' to allow MGM's publicity department to run wild with romantic possibilities, was changed when an adman came out with the advertisement stating "Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in LOVE." There were two alternate endings filmed, one with a European sad conclusion while the American had a more chipper fade out.

Garbo and Gilbert appeared in two additional movies together. "Love," however, was Gilbert's rare opportunity to direct a few scenes in his movie. First Dimitri Buchowetzki, then Edmund Goulding directed a majority of scenes for MGM. Producer Irving Thalberg wasn't happy seeing the roughly-edited movie. Through Garbo's insistence, Thalberg turned to Gilbert and the producer's favorite cameraman, Willian Daniels, to reshoot some of the scenes that he felt needed replacing. Once the Gilbert/Daniels team finished, the re-edited sequences pleased Thalberg and was released to great fanfare, solidifying Garbo's stardom.

With a mix of modern dresses for the ladies and typical regimental outfits for the men, this adaptation of ANNA KARENINA is quite different from the novel and other film versions in a few ways. After deserting her family for Vronsky, he does not tire of and desert her - he stays faithful - it is she who voluntarily gives him up to prevent his being thrown out of the Guards and thereby saves his name from disgrace - her suicide is to save him, rather than being an act of despair.

Anna's completely "losing it" when his horse falls in a race - in front of society - is her downfall as it exposes their affair to the world, after which society must wreak its revenge. Without this "flaw," things might have gone otherwise for her.

The finest scenes are between Garbo and Philippe de Lacy, who plays her son. Their two scenes are so full of playful mother-son love as to prove to better than Garbo's scenes with Gilbert. Indeed, there is none of the passion or obsession here that the two displayed earlier that year in FLESH AND THE DEVIL. de Lacy is a beautiful young actor and a "natural." One of the annoying things about Vronsky is his inability to understand this love - he selfishly wants Anna all to himself - the cad!

Garbo's farewell scene with Gilbert, she knowing she'll never see him again and he oblivious to this fact, is also quite well done.

The TCM print is flawed by having a live audience reacting poorly on the soundtrack, although the newly commissioned score by Arnold Brostoff is quite fine. This soundtrack addition occurred in 1994 and seems the only one accompanying prints of the film currently.

There is a beautifully photographed waltz with Garbo and Gilbert - oft seen in compilations and reminiscent of his waltz scenes with Mae Murray in THE MERRY WIDOW.

All in all, worth catching for Garbo, but the two later remakes of the work are much better.

LOVE is the perfect title for this hacked-down adaptation of Tolstoy's mammoth novel ANNA KARENINA. It was made to cash in on the popularity of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, fresh from their box office triumph in FLESH AND THE DEVIL earlier the same year. Like virtually all of Garbo's silent films, much of the screen time is devoted to watching the great tormented Swede abandon herself to love, suffer for love, contemplate love, lose love, die. It is interesting to compare this version of the novel with the one made eight years later in which Garbo played opposite Fredric March who, while less dashing and handsome than Gilbert, did give a fine performance as the impetuous and essentially cruel Count Vronsky. In the latter film Garbo is less attractive due to the clash between the curly coiffure she is given and the strong planes and features of her face. She even looks like a male in drag in some scenes. But in LOVE she is beautiful and feminine throughout. The clinging 1920's-style dresses help, even if they detract from the authenticity of a story that is supposed to be set in 1870's Russia. Gilbert was one of the best actors of his era and the talent shows here. He is also a magnetic screen presence and one can understand why audiences in 1927 flocked to see these two together.

The scenes of mother-son tenderness between Garbo and Philippe deLacy do indeed seem incestuous as others have pointed out, but so do the scenes between Garbo and Freddie Bartholomew in the 1935 version. I think it was just Garbo's way of expressing love on screen; you see her perform the same kind of nuzzling in other movies, whether the attentions are being given to a man, a woman or a child. I disliked both endings, but at least Garbo was ravishing in the happy one. And remember, Garbo was just shy of 22 when she filmed this, yet she is believable as an older woman. She had a face that could express any age.

This movie cries out for a re-scoring. The print shown on TCM is marred by what sounds like muffled applause from time to time.