FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

iamjbismay I Loved this film but I enjoy mostly all Garbo movies The finest actress of all time No one has or ever will compare with or to her. She has a Mystical magic that no one seems to carry. She worked very well with Gable and they should have had many more films. Anyone know why they never did? I know of course Joan Crawford and Clark Gable had loads of chemistry as well and Joan is my second all time favorite actress. If you enjoy Both performers you won't wanna miss this film. Of course I've have yet to read more Greta Garbo Bio's and they may contain the reason why these two never crossed paths again. Joan mentioned Gable often in her Interviews but never mentioned this pairing.

Steffi_P In an era when iconic stars meant more than at any other time, two of the brightest were Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. Although there was some considerable overlap between their periods of stardom, this fairly standard 1931 melodrama was their only movie together. This is not as surprising as it seems, since repeated star pairings were always carefully formed through apparent compatibility. Garbo and Gable however were players of remarkably different style and temperament.Garbo had already been an established – and massively popular – actress in the silent era, and despite the considerable hype around her early talkies, in retrospect her silent features remain her best period. It's not her accent; it's just that her mellifluous, almost operatic manner did not really work when out loud. By contrast, without sound her mesmerising presence remains pure and captivating. She would later adapt for speaking roles, and by the late 30s producers would be actively casting her in parts that suited her ethereal style, notable highlights being Camille (1937) and Ninotchka (1939). As it is, her performance in Susan Lenox is already an improvement upon her at-the-time-celebrated but now very clunky talkie debut in Anna Christie (1930).Gable on the other hand was an up-and-comer at this point. In fact, though he was gaining familiarity as a supporting player in movies such as Night Nurse and A Free Soul (both released earlier the same year) he was thus far getting typecast as a thuggish gangster. The reason his potential as a desirable lead man hadn't fully been realised yet was a simple case of presentation. All it would take was a thin moustache and a few locks of hair drooping over his forehead, but appearing as he does here clean-shaven and hair slicked back, all you see is an ordinary man with a somewhat odd-shaped face. When he makes a few appearances towards the end of Susan Lenox with a few days' stubble, mussed-up hair and rolled-up sleeves, the effect is incredible. I feel it was a big failing on the part of the filmmakers to not make more of this rugged Gable in his earlier appearances and the final scenes.To be fair though, director Robert Z. Leonard is really more interested in favouring Garbo, who was then the better-known and more bankable star. Although this was some time past the period when movies were often shot in both sound and silent versions to cater for places that hadn't yet made the switch, Leonard still sticks to a primarily visual form of storytelling. There are numerous close-ups of hands and feet in action, often used to open a scene and give it context. He allows many of the ideas and feelings of the characters to come through in wordless glances, often relegating the dialogue to the status of embellishment. With such purity he is responsible for staging some haunting and powerful moments, such as the sideshow proprietor's coercing Garbo into bed, the two of them moving closer to the screen without uttering a sound.The differences between Garbo and Gable were not confined to their approaches to the craft; apparently they despised each other offscreen too. Still, it's a testament to the considerable talents of the both of them that there seems to be a decent rapport between them as a fictional couple. Both were after all great screen lovers, at their best when dizzy with passion or locked in an embrace, and a movie like Susan Lenox is bread and butter to them both. They meet here in passing, Garbo (although younger) already past her peak, Gable just rising towards his. And while neither of them is at their ideal, star quality is supreme, and it turns out this is not a bad little movie.

dbdumonteil Troubles never come singly,and in the short space of barely 75 minutes,the least we can say is that rain keeps falling over Garbo's head.The director treats of his heroine's childhood as a shadow show,a good idea and a way to sweeten the rather dense and eventful story.So dense it's sometimes hard to keep up with it.GB is a wretch,then a circus artist, a socialite,a hostess in a seedy African cabaret..Well it's melodrama!This is not as good as contemporary Stahl's best works though,because of the unsatisfying cutting. Long before "Ninotchka" Garbo laughs when she sees caviar .(it looks like buckshots!).This is not as much misogynist as they often say.Except for Gable's character and the man in the cabaret,all the males are infamous pigs whose only desire is to get the heroine in their bed.

marcslope Maybe the novel had substance, but as boiled down by a team of MGM hacks the script comes off as silly women's-magazine stuff. Garbo escapes an arranged marriage to a brute, meets Gable, is forced to run away and join the circus (!), is spurned by Gable through a misunderstanding, swears revenge on him but still loves him, just happens to run into him again in a hard-drinking south-of-the-border backwater... you get the idea. There's never any doubt as to the outcome, but surely they could have come up with more of an ending than the one here, where both characters give in to each other more out of exhaustion than anything else.Garbo is, as expected, faultless -- intuitive, honest, and at the peak of her beauty. Lovingly lit by her favorite cameraman, William Daniels, she's magnetic even when forced into hackneyed situations and purple dialogue. The director, Robert Z. Leonard, plays some interesting Freudian tricks -- the shadows are deep and symbolic, and most of the male characters seem to be carrying sticks of one sort or another. Without Garbo it would be typical early-talkie MGM junk, but she lends dignity and distinctiveness even to boilerplate stuff like this.