The Kiss (1929)

Greta Garbo's last silent film finds her unhappily married to Andres Randalf, tearfully fending off the advances of old boyfriend Conrad Nagel and letting young and callow Lew Ayres steal A Kiss from her. Ayres is the son of Holmes Herbert who is her husband's business partner complicating things even more.You can't blame Ayres though. In that last silent film Garbo is certainly at her most alluring and she carries the film off beautifully.Ayres is thinking with his male member and he's at an age where there is more tendency to do that. When Randalf catches him with Garbo he starts beating on the kid as any jealous husband would. He gets shot for his troubles and Garbo is arrested. She also shields young Ayres telling him to leave the premises.This is where Nagel comes in. Even without dialog as per usual in a courtroom scene he does well in putting over the dramatic impact of the trial. All actors love courtroom drama and Nagel gets some good innings in here. I have to say though, French forensics leave a lot to be desired if they are manipulated in the way they are.In the hands of a lesser actress The Kiss would have been melodramatic claptrap. But Garbo can make anything look positively poetical.

"The kiss" took the melodramatic accents of Feyder 's precedent work " Les Nouveaux Messieurs"and tightened them up;whereas that work should have been boiled down to a 90 min movie, "the kiss" depicts a tragedy in admirably succinct style :only 62 min,a very good screenplay which does not reveal the whole truth before the last minutes.It's the classic story of the divine lady married with a graybeard without love ,in love with a more handsome gent;add a young man,pretending to be a man (the subject of the immature young lad will come back later in Feyder 's career in " Pension Mimosas")and all the ingredients of a good melodrama are in it.In Hollywood,Feyder accurately depicted his native land:in jails for women ,the wardens were nuns (in 1960 ,in Clouzot's "La Vérité" ,Brigitte Bardot was guarded by sisters too);and the gendarmes' uniforms are exactly as they were.After this successful work (which owed a lot to G.Garbo in her last silent movie) ,Feyder was disappointed with the screenplays left for him to direct and he came back to his native land and produced his greatest achievements :"Le Grand Jeu" ,"Pension Mimosas" and his masterpiece "La Kermesse Héroique".

"The Kiss" has a fairly predictable plot, but interesting acting from the excellent cast keeps you watching on this one. As others wrote, the Vitaphone soundtrack here was pretty poor, except for one section; all the melodies have been used before in many silent films. Listening to classical Tchaikovsky is not really appropriate for a modern film like "The Kiss."Greta has some great closeups in this film, but in certain sections seems to be sleepwalking through her role. Conrad Nagel was a delight to watch, he always seemed much more handsome on screen than in his still photos. He is the hero in this film, if the film could really be said to have a hero after everyone lies in court.Lew Ayres was adorable, and had to have made a great impression on studio bosses when the film was first released, for he went straight from this film into his classic "All Quiet On The Western Front", which made him a star. Holmes Herbert, so good in Pola Negri's "A Woman of the World", here is aged with makeup and plays Lew Ayres' father convincingly. Anders Randolf was a bit jarring as Greta's husband, but his performance was fine too.The print was decent on this MGM release, compared to another Garbo feature, "The Single Standard", made earlier. But of both films, "The Single Standard" is by far the superior film technically, plot-wise, and in its performances, though its print is more worn.

By the time "The Kiss" was made, Garbo was an established >superstar, and her films were specially tailored vehicles to >enhance this stardom. Yet, surprisingly, French director Jacques >Feyder subordinates Garbo to a rather pedestrian murder mystery. >Even worse, he cuts away from "the kiss" (between Garbo & Lew >Ayers) referenced in the title. M-G-M might have been too >worried over Garbo's imminent entrance into talkies to care. >The film is notable for its fantastic Art Deco sets, but also >suffers from one of the worst contemporary Movietone scores of >any late silent feature. A mixed bag.