The Temptress (1926)

"You should see the other guy..."

Directed by Fred Niblo
Starring Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno and Marc McDermott
Produced by Cosmopolitan Productions

During an exotic masquerade ball, the beautiful Elena runs from the dance floor to escape her would-be suitor Fontenoy.  Her flight takes her right into the arms of Manuel Robledo and as often happens in Hollywood the two fall in love.  She refuses to share her name, but Robeldo soon discovers she is the wife of his friend, the Marquis de Torre Bianca. 

Yes, Elena is a married woman, but her husband enjoys living beyond their family's means. So, he rents out his wife to the wealthy Fontenoy. Sadly, Fontenoy is a bit over-indulgent and bankrupts himself by showering gifts upon Elena.

To forget his love, Robeldo heads to the Argentine to work as lead engineer on a dam project. The escape doesn't go to plan as the Marquis and Elena soon join him.  And as if Robeldo's trouble with love wasn't enough, a local gang leader wants to take out Robeldo and his dam.

Will Robeldo escape the evil Manos Duras and find love?  Will anyone with an XY chromosome not immediately start acting like an idiot after meeting Elena?

The Temptress is a romantic drama, but it's one of those romantic dramas.  You know, a film where every guy falls all over themselves to please the woman.  And Greta Garbo's Elena is the woman.

We've seen this act before, most notably with Theda Bara in A Fool There Was.  Unlike Bara's vamp character though, Garbo just seems to be a beautiful woman whose men suffer from bad luck once they are under her power.

That's not to say she's not culpable.  She indulges the men and clearly loves the attention.  When she moves to the Argentine, she dons an elegant dress for their frontier dinner and gets called out for it.  But she's not changing her dress or her ways.  When the fish are biting, why mess with the bait?

As for the bad luck of her men, Elena qualifies as her own natural disaster.  Through her involvement, Fontenoy is bankrupted and commits suicide, her husband is shot and killed, one of Robeldo's friends is killed by another of his friends and the dam gets blown to smithereens.  There are hurricanes without that kind of resume.

It's also one of those films in its dialogue.  A sampling:

"I must have you alone - I have so much to say to you. I've waited so long - just for you - "


"All my life, I've been wishing to meet such a woman as you - on such a night as this!"

"Let us keep for an hour the glamour of romance.  I tell you this - I belong to no one else."

"Remember this of me- there were tears in my eyes when I said - - 'I love you!'"

All of these are from the first ten minutes of a 105 minute movie.  If you are like me, you'll need a doctor's visit to remove your finger from your throat.  And those hyphens are important.  They are the dramatic, One Life to Live pauses that are present in every line of dialogue.  Every -- line.

I have not said much about Garbo and frankly that's because there is not much to say.  Elena doesn't do much.  What we know about her comes more from everyone's reaction to her and not from anything she does.  Elena is a blank slate of eyes looking meaningfully at some off-camera horizon as men swoon.  That said, Garbo does inhabit the character in a way that you get the attraction.  The camera loves her and so does the audience.

I wish there was another character I liked.  Robledo is close to a hero, but he's a little too wimpy for most of the film.  Then at the end, as he is motivating his crew to try to save the dam, he threatens to shoot the first man to desert.  Then, he randomly shoots someone.  Your hero, ladies and gentlemen!

Niblo shoots the film well enough.  There are some truly beautiful shots throughout.  His images of Paris and the masquerade party are warm and beautiful.  His gauzy lens makes Garbo glow and there is nothing wrong with that.

There was one sequence that surprised me with its violence.  Robledo challenges Duras to a fight and after debating swords versus pistols, they settle on an Argentine fight.  The crowd drew a circle in the sand, handed the two men whips and let them go at it.  First one to leave the circle loses.  When Robledo finally wins, both men are a bloody mess.  The moment underlined just how dangerous this world was and heightened the stakes for the rest of the film.

The Temptress is predictable and features annoying dialogue.  Still, it's not without its charms, principally Garbo and the way the men who surround her are dispatched.  All of that gets us to:

** out of *****