bkoganbing For Greta Garbo's second film under her new MGM contract the studio went back to the same source that they got for her first film with them Torrent. Vicente Blasco Ibanez offered up another of his novels for Garbo, The Temptress. Greta's got a whole lot of the men panting after her in this one.Blasco Ibanez also gave us the slightly more familiar Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and Blood And Sand which served Rudolph Valentino well during the silent era. Garbo's character of Elena has a lot of similarity with Dona Sol in Blood And Sand. It ends a lot worse for Elena than for Dona Sol.Garbo is married to Armand Kaliz who is not above peddling his wife's charms to get ahead. Right now she's got the wealthiest banker in Paris Marc McDermott in tow, but he means nothing to here but a cash cow for the husband. Who she really likes after meeting him at a costume party is Antonio Moreno, an engineer from Argentina who is looking for investors in a dam he wants to build.After McDermott commits suicide when he's facing ruin and names Garbo as the one responsible, to escape until the notoriety dies down Garbo and Kaliz go to the Argentine Pampas and visit with Moreno. The local bully and bandit leader Roy D'Arcy takes one look at her and likes her and knows she's available in the right conditions. That sets up all the action for the remainder of the film.Garbo's performance in The Temptress certainly assured her of a long career which was only briefly interrupted by the coming of sound where MGM took superb care to see that their investment transitioned smoothly. She is seductive and alluring in The Temptress like she was never before or since, even in her torrid film with John Gilbert Flesh And The Devil or in Mata Hari which calls for seductive and alluring like it calls for breathing.Moreno was one of the first players to be known as Latin Lovers and he was about ending his career in those roles and would be transitioning to character parts. Roy D'Arcy as the bandit chief registers the best after Garbo. He had that Snidely Whiplash thing down pat and the silent screen certainly called for those overacted gestures. His career would continue in sound, but not as successfully. His duel with the whips with Moreno is as savage an encounter between hero and villain as you'll ever see on film.The Temptress after over 80 years holds up well. For Garbo fans everywhere.

A. Meyer The movie has flaws, but one of them is not an old fashioned attitude toward women. The opening quote says "God and man created woman." That is to say, our perception of women is from men's point of view. But this film presents a beautiful woman from her own point of view (and the film's). We see a woman not only bearing moral blame for the actions and choices of men, but also being prevented from a fulfilling life by her beloved's obsession with his own desire. The most telling line Garbo has in the film begins something like, "They don't want me; they want my body. And they don't care about my happiness. It is for their own." And indeed not one man in the film sees her as anything but a fulfillment of his own desire, even the Moreno character, capable as he is of great heroism and dedication. He remains a run of the mill guy when it comes to women. She has no existence as a personality for any of these men. In the end our "hero" is left to deal with his conscience, as Garbo's character emerges as the only one in the drama with real substance. Look at Ibanez's biography and at his progressive sensibilies, which both of the film's directors apparently shared.

Neil Doyle I watched this for the first time on TCM with an original musical score by Michael Picton and was fascinated by the score and Garbo's stunning appearance. I'm not a Garbo fan and some of her films are really hard to enjoy by today's standards of film-making (and acting), but this one is watchable enough even though it drags occasionally.It's gorgeously photographed and Garbo is given the royal camera treatment. In fact, she's treated royally by everyone except the man she loves who discovers too soon that in matters of love, she has a strange code of conduct. Well worth viewing if you're a fan of Garbo's films. Otherwise, you may not make it to the finale since it's rather overlong for such a simple story.Handsomely produced. Antoneo Moreno is interesting in the male lead.

TxMike It is important to recognize that this film, "The Temptress", is almost 80 years old. The entertainment sensibilities were different then. This movie is silent, and large, white subtitles are superimposed, telling us a snippet of what is being said. But the actors are also very animated in their delivery of lines, and watching their body language is also important. Most of the lines would be considered "cheesy" by today's standards.This was Greta Garbo's 8th movie. Filmed when she was only 20, her character is Elena, and whom we figure out quickly is the Temptress of the title. In Paris she meets Robledo (Antonio Moreno, 38), an Argentine engineer, they dance, and he is smitten. He tells her she is the woman he has waited all his life for. She tells him that she "has no other man." What she fails to mention is that she is married and has a rich lover (Fontenoy) already on the side. Her husband puts up with it, because of the expensive jewels she gets.Robledo finds out about the husband the next day when he calls on him, strictly a change encounter. That evening, at a big dinner party, wealthy Fontenoy exposes his affair with Elena, tells everyone he is going broke, and kills himself with poison in his drink. Elena and her husband become news. Robledo cannot understand how she could profess to love him, when she already had a husband and a lover. He travels back to the Argentine to build a dam.Disgraced in Paris, Elena and her husband travel also to the Argentine, a pretty big country, but happen to pull up right into the small village Robledo was in. A thug, Manos Duras, gives them trouble, there is a fight, Robledo prevails, injured. The two men and Elena seek to live in harmony in the Argentine.An interesting movie for Greta Garbo. I had only seen her as a more mature woman, and didn't really understand why she was considered one of the great beauties in the history of film. Now I know. As a 20 year old, she was simply spectacular. That comes across even in this old, black and white film shown on the TCM network. The story itself is overly melodramatic, but that was what was required for the period it was made for.