Judge — February 5, 1927 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGING performance in “Flesh and the Devil,” that Greta Garbo is the finest actress on the sereen. Inci- dentally, “Flesh and the Devil” (a typically idiotic title) is the best Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture that has blessed these weary eyes since “The Big Parade.” To account for its excellence it is not enough to say that Hermann Sudermann wrote the novel, “The Undying Past,” from which the pic ture is taken, and supplied it, there fore, at the start with a richness, a restraint and a sophistication foreign to the cinema. Anyone familiar with the movies knows that no values ‘whatever in the original story need stand in the way of a scenario writer honestly bent on murder. The fact that the hand of Sudermann is still discernible in “Flesh and the Devil” must be put down to the eredit of Mr. Benjamin F. Glazer, who wrote the screen play, and Mr. Clarence Brown, who directed it, and unquestionably also to Miss Garbo, whose interpretation of the principal role is not only intelligent but creative. There is plenty of sentimentality in the picture, but with this differ- e it belongs to the characters, not to the author. A story of Ger- [ seems to me, after seeing her “Keep marshin’, Pin Varrety”—Intelligent melodrama. “Battling Butler” —Buster Keaton triumphs “Beau Geste”’—Beautiful and dumb. “The Scarlet Letter—Lillian Gish at her best “The Strong Man"—Harry Langdon ditto "Sparrows"—If you love Mary Pickford. | “The Campus Flirt”—Bebe, the tomboy “Tin Gods"—Renée Adorée dies for love You'd Re Surprised” —Subtle Griffith, The Temptress” —Redeemed by Greta Garbo. “Rid Roots” —It won't bore you The Ace of Cade" Mediocre Menjou. “The Better ‘Ole —A side-splitter. “London"—Poor British film “The Sorrows of Satan" —Orgiastic Rardelye the Magnificent!” —S'death' “We're In the Nary Now" —Very funn; “Ererybody's Acting” —Amusing “Forever After” —Collegiate romance. Vprtage’—A window on vaudeville The Eagle of the Seas’—Ain't no sech | pirates | “Potemkin —Splendid | “What Price Glory?” —Pictorially creat | “The Canadian"’—Drab. | | “Fauet"”—A fine picture | “Old Tronsides" —Excessively patriotic Michael Strogoff”—Exciting melodrama. | | The Gorilla Hunt” —Most interesting. | | “Stranded in Parts’ A bedroom and Bebe. | “Tell It to the Marimes”—But they won't | believe it "The Fire Brigade”—-Exciting propaganda “Hotel Imperial’ —Pola deserves better “Valencia” —Mae Murray flees. Ro D’Arey’s teeth "A Little Journey’ —But quite long enongh. | “Don Juan" —False and florid. | “The Lady in Ermine"—Better 9s an operetta | man friendship and love which ig- nored the abysmally sentimental motives and standards of the Ger- mans would be false to its model. ‘Thus the two young men principally invelved in the plot of “Flesh and the Devil” had sworn, as boys, undying friendship, sealing their pact with drops of their own blood under a sylvan altar, and this fan tastic oath had become the govern- ing principle in their conduct toward each other in later life. Leo (John Gilbert) becomes entangled with the lady, Felicitas, impersonated by Greta Garbo, kills her husband in a duel and is “advised” to volunteer for African service. After an exile of three years he returns, his mind, his heart, his senses occupied with one image, that of the lady for whom he had fought and fled and who had promised with all the passionate ardor of her smoldering personality to wait for him. She appears to him on the steamer deck, in the car window. The rhythmic throb of the ship’s engines, the click of the car rails chant her name. All of which is presented pictorially with vigor and vividness and becoming humor. But he arrives to find her the wife of the chum for whom he had sworn undying friendship. Moreover, the treachery is all the woman’s; Ulrich gonna lurn you over to-hie-the polcesh.” the MOVILS* | comicbooks.com