The Painted Veil

This movie is imperfect, but I love it anyway.

Its imperfections:

The soundstage China of 1933's "Bitter Tea of General Yen" leaves the soundstage China of 1934's "Painted Veil" in the dust. "Yen's" China draws you in and intoxicates you. "Painted Veil's" China is fun, but it's a bit silly and superficial. A San Francisco Chinatown Chinese New Year's parade would be more profound.

George Brent is at his worst here. I've never seen him do anything quite like what he does here -- a fly-by-night and exploitative romancer who toys with women's hearts.

Brent wasn't great looking, but he was very good at playing the grounded, reliable foil to electric characters like Bette Davis' Judith Traherne in "Dark Victory."

Here, as Townsend, while speaking serious words, Brent adopts a silly smile, and -- literally -- renounces everything he says in the very next sentence. Maybe a much better looking, or more conventionally handsome, actor could have made this character charming in a snake-like, dangerous way (Erroll Flynn?) but Brent didn't really have the equipment to make Townsend as charming to the audience as he might have been to a neglected wife in China.

Garbo plays a near spinster who watches her younger sister marry, and, on the rebound, marries a man she doesn't love out of desperation.

How on earth could anyone make sense of *Garbo* as a desperate spinster? The movie doesn't even try to make sense of that. It just asks us to believe it. The viewer has to try to make up reasons for her spinster status. (Her parents kept her locked in a closet the first thirty or so years of her life? She had a horrible facial deformaty that suddenly fell off?)

BUT!

I still love this movie.

I love it for the moment when Herbert Marshall says, with the kind of real passion you expect of a contemporary production of a Eugene O'Neill play, that he despises himself for loving Garbo, after she has cuckolded him.

It's great to see Marshall, who so often played helpless men ill used by women ("The Letter," "Duel in the Sun," "The Little Foxes"), here finally able to effectively express his bitterness at being so ill used, and take some action in response, even if that action is intended to be fatal.

I love it for the complications that arise in the final portion. Hearts are changed. Suffering and human sacrifice changes them. Love is born of the kind of big events that sometimes do change people, and life stories, in real life.

This ending, though not in compliance with Maughm's novel, didn't strike me as a "Hollywood" "happy" ending at all. It struck me as a profound ending. It reminded me of a more recent film, Bertolucci's "Besieged," that also talks about the role of altruism in love and eroticism.

For those features, I deeply value this movie, in spite of its superficial imperfections.

Married to a distracted English scientist, a beautiful Austrian finds forbidden love beyond THE PAINTED VEIL in China.

Based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, this MGM film is soap opera of a high order, featuring excellent production values & acting. The dialogue is also refreshingly literate & thoughtful, something of a surprise in a film which might be pigeonholed as just an elaborate potboiler.

Fascinating as always, Greta Garbo is at last showcased in a film whose backdrop & setting matches her for exoticism. Enervated by the overwhelming cultural saturation of pre-war China, she seems freed to be essentially herself - shorn of all needs to bewitch - and is able to give herself over to the seriousness & drama of her character's dilemma. What the viewer is left with is one of her best performances.

The two men in Garbo's life are excellently portrayed by Herbert Marshall & George Brent. Neither characters are without faults, but the actors make them intimately human, revealing some of the loneliness in each man's heart. These actors had distinct similarities, making it something of a bold move for MGM to put them in the same film, but also enabling the viewer to understand why Garbo could love both.

Excellent support is given by gentle Jean Hersholt as Garbo's kindly father; Forrester Harvey as a happy-go-lucky embassy employee in China & Warner Oland as a sympathetic Chinese general.

Movie mavens will recognize Keye Luke as a young doctor and Mary Forbes & Ethel Griffies as British ladies in Hong Kong - all uncredited.

The Chinese scenes show MGM at what it did best - creating another world, utterly realistic, in its back lot.

Greta Garbo stars with Herbert Marshall, George Brent, Warner Oland, and Jean Hersholt in "The Painted Veil," from 1934, based on the novel by Somerset Maugham. Garbo plays an Austrian woman, Katrin, who grabs at the chance to marry her father's research assistant, Walter Fane (Marshall) after her sister marries and leaves home. At first, they are happy, as Katrin gets to see parts of the world she hasn't seen. Soon, however, she becomes lonely, as Walter is busy fighting a cholera epidemic.

Katrin falls for Jack Townsend (George Brent) from the British embassy, and the two enter into a passionate affair. Walter finds out; then Katrin is humiliated when she realizes that Jack cares more for his reputation than her and does not seem willing to get a divorce. Walter insists that she travel with him as he goes deeper into China to fight the epidemic; she realizes he just wants her to get sick and die.

Garbo is incredible in this film - warm, sweet, and flirtatious in the beginning, and rising to the dramatic challenges later, she gives a beautifully layered, sympathetic, and powerful performance. Marshall is very good, as is the rest of the cast - but Garbo just walks away with the whole thing. A very unusual presence and talent, very passionate and committed. It's such a shame that she didn't pursue opportunities for films in Europe after the war.

Also, the Chinese atmosphere (totally MGM backlot) feels very authentic.

This film ends differently from the 2006 version. Though I liked the 2006 version, it lacks the magic of this one. Magic, spelled G-a-r-b-o.

The future looked a little uncertain for Greta Garbo in 1934. Under pressure from the rampant, crackpot Catholic League of Decency whose members were boycotting movie theatres and declaring 'purify or destroy Hollywood', the usually malleable Joseph Breen was obliged to make even stricter the Production Code. 'Mata Hari' was cut and 'Queen Christina' taken out of circulation whilst this adaptation of Somerset Maugham's 'The Painted Veil' needed to tone down its so-called sexual content and instead reflect moral values.

These factors alone cannot entirely explain why this film disappoints. Garbo's scenes with Herbert Marshall are excellent and there is a chemistry between her and George Brent owing to their relationship at the time being more than just professional. It just lacks that 'alchemy' by which everything comes together and falls below director Richard Boleslawski's usual high standards.

Garbo need not have worried as David 0. Selznick was soon to come to her aid. Whatever its flaws and despite being the least faithful to Maugham's original it remains, for this viewer at any rate, the most entertaining of the three versions. 'The Seventh Sin' of Ronald Neame and an uncredited Vincente Minnelli is rather lacklustre whilst it is probably kinder to draw a discreet veil over the most recent version directed by someone named John Curran.

Based on a book by W. Somerset Maugham of the same name, The Painted Veil tells the tale of Katrin Koerber (Greta Garbo) who is lonely after her sister's marriage, with whom she was very close. She agrees to marry her father's research associate Dr. Walter Fane (Herbert Marshall) who takes her to China. However, he is deeply involved with his work and often neglects Katrin in favour of his work which leads her to seek love and attention from another man: Jack Townsend (George Brent).

Although I have been unsure of Garbo's acting abilities at times, she does well and truly shine in the role of the unfaithful and confused wife - a complex character which she masters with ease. Herbert Marshall does a good job of her husband caught between emotions and George Brent – not a terribly good looking man – was unconvincing as her lover. These two men seem to fade into the background when Garbo is on screen – her exotic; cat like appearance really captures the audience – despite not playing a glamorous character!

The scenery of old China is lavish and the costumes for Garbo are a pleasure to see. However, the divine Greta Garbo is the only thing that really makes The Painted Veil watchable. The plot is thin and weak but Garbo does a wonderful job and makes the melodramatic material believable and interesting. Not a great film, but watch it for Garbo.