Clarence Brown

Letty Lynton

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Jerry and Letty

Letty Lynton tells the story of Madeleine Smith, who wanted to move on from a lover who didn’t want to move on from her. And so she killed him. The same story was also told in David Lean’s Madeleine in 1950 (good too) and in Dishonored Lady, starring Hedy Lamarr in 1947 (not seen it). Here it’s Joan Crawford who plays the deadly female, a rich flibbertigibbet first encountered in Montevideo dancing the night away with hot Latin lover Emile Renaul (Nils Asther). It’s obvious from the film’s opening moments that Letty has had enough of Emile, who’s a bit clingy for her liking. And so, instructing her maid Miranda (Louise Closser Hale) … Read more

100 Years of… Flesh and the Devil

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Close up of Garbo and John Gilbert

Flesh and the Devil was Greta Garbo’s third Hollywood movie after arriving from Europe aged 20 in 1925, and it’s the one where everything suddenly clicks. She has the right director (Clarence Brown), the right director of photography (William H Daniels) and the right co-star (top-billed John Gilbert aka The Great Lover). Originally it was meant to be Lillian Gish in the lead, but Garbo got the job because she was cheaper. The massive success of Flesh and the Devil made Garbo bigger than Gish, Swanson and all of the rest of them, bigger even than any studio. From this moment on she could write her own ticket. With total total control she … Read more

100 Years of… The Eagle

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Rudolph Valentino in hussar uniform

Rudolph Valentino made The Eagle in 1925 and while it wasn’t a smash along the lines of Blood and Sand or The Sheik, it did better than his previous four films – it was a comeback of sorts, and came not long before Valentino was whisked to the place from which no comeback is possible, after contracting peritonitis and dying. Death is on the cards in The Eagle too, an adaptation of a Pushkin story about a young hussar who is spotted by the libidinous Czarina Catherine II and offered a place in her bed. But young, handsome and proud Vladimir Doubrovsky (the name is spelt a number of ways on screen) doesn’t … Read more