Toronto Silent Film Festival: LOVE (1927)

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With special guest author Scott Reisfield, great-nephew of Greta Garbo, who will introduce the film.

Directed by Edmund Goulding 

Starring: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert

Live accompaniment by Laura Sgoi

MGM’s version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was re-titled Love (1927) but it’s possible that any story starring John Gilbert and Greta Garbo would have been given this title. When the off screen romance started in the Flesh and the Devil, the movie magazines screaming headlines and breathless reporting of their love affair made it impossible to do anything else. In that respect, it was inevitable that Tolstoy’s story would become heavily modified. Garbo would star in the mid 1930s remake which restored the original story. But here, at the young age of 22, Garbo was already celebrated not only for her beauty as a screen goddess but as a gifted artist. The resulting chemistry between Garbo and matinee idol John Gilbert glowed on film and they became a legendary couple both on and off the screen. 

Time wrote in December 1927, “It isn’t Tolstoy, but it is John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, beautifully presented and magnificently acted.”