(Es war [de])
USA 1926
d: Clarence Brown
Warner Home Video (Region 0 de)
sc: Benjamin F. Glazer, Marian Ainslee; Hanns Kräly, Frederica Sagor (uncredited) (based on the novel "The Undying Past" by Hermann Sudermann)
c: William H. Daniels (b/w)
e: Lloyd Nosler
m: Carl Davis (1982)
p: Irving Thalberg (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM))
w: John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent, William Orlamond, George Fawcett, Eugenie Besserer, Marc McDermott, Marcelle Corday
pr: 25 Dez 1926
rt: 112:34 min
dvd-rl: 14 Okt 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Music Score (1982) Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: English intertitles; English, German subtitles
supp: The Garbo Silents Collection
1988 Thames Television / Turner Entertainment Restauration
• Audio Commentary by Barry Paris
• Alternate Ending (2:32 min)
Renowned for its electric love scenes between Garbo and Gilbert (though these days they don't seem that torrid), this is an elegant bit of melodramatic fluff, with Garbo in swooning form as the adulterous Countess coming between her soldier lover (Gilbert) and his best buddy (Hanson), who marries her after the count (MacDermott) is killed in a duel. Much ado about nothing, really, but Garbo is as luminous as ever, thanks to William Daniels' camerawork.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Clarence Brown, director of seven of Garbo's films, teams with William Daniels, the cinematographer who captured "The Face" of Garbo in close-up, in this visually elegant film, the classic Garbo silent that reflects the artistic and technical heights achieved by the Hollywood silent cinema in the late 1920s. Garbo plays the countess who turns the relationship between two friends-for-life (John Gilbert and Lars Hanson) into a triangle. Clement André-Ani, briefly principal designer for MGM, created costumes for Garbo's first three Hollywood films. Clinging gossamer shifts, extravagantly decorated outfits, and open lace ruffs framing her neck and face placed her in a realm of fantasy and timelessness, appropriate for the erotic woman of mystery Garbo had quickly become. "She was the despair of the wardrobe department," André-Ani said, as she hated elaborate costumes and was suspended on this film for refusing to attend fittings. It wasn't until her first film with Adrian, A Woman of Affairs, that she appeared in the clothing she popularized for women's wear: the trenchcoat, low-heeled walking shoes, and soft, brow-hugging hats.
— Lee Amazonas
•••••
Without being a great film in itself, 'Flesh and the Devil', the first of the Garbo-Gilbert romances, was quite certainly a box office milestone - and it also represents something of a high-water mark in the sheer elgance and 'bigness' of movies in their most glamorous era. The sets have a solidity and glossiness which is staggering, and the technical proficiency of the trick effects - stunning matte-shots, for example, which literally make today's efforts look crude by comparison - is unsurpassed. The photography gleams and shimmers. And dramatically, the picture is big in every sense of the word. Honor, loyalty, love - strong emotions all of them, are given full expression in a story which permits no facile solutions but demands a duel, a ravaging sickness, a desperate pursuit across a frozen lake, and similar ingredients, before a happy - or at least, a satisfying - ending could be reached.
— Classics of the Silent Screen
