MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE KISS" (1929)

One minute into recently watching The Kiss, I realized I had seen it a few years earlier, but totally forgot having done so. There's your review right there.

Having never been a member of the cult of Greta Garbo, I decided that The Kiss
would be an easy enough second viewing, thanks to its five-reel (50 minute) length. Not that the familiar story demanded anything longer.

A beautiful young woman in an unhappy marriage to an older rich guy (gee, when did that ever happen?) is having an affair with the man she truly loves.

The twist? The husband catches her in an unwanted kiss from an 18 year-old who's madly in love with her. A fight ensues, followed by a gunshot. The husband lies dead on the floor. 

Who did it? Was it an accident? And why do people in old movies always keep pistols in the desk drawers?

Feyder tells Garbo she isn't miserable enough.

 Half of Garbo's popularity at the time must have been because audiences loved seeing a classy, rich woman so unhappy on screen. Being a silent movie, The Kiss appeared to have allowed director Jacques Feyder to shout "OK, Greta, look miserable!" while occasionally adding "... while running your hand through your hair!" and "... while curling your upper lip!" Never has any woman looked so unhappy being the most popular movie star of her time.

 

Advice to the ladies: Never a touch man's tie
if you aren't interested in him.

 This is rather a shame, since when she's not being miserable, Garbo is actually kind of engaging, not to mention possessing a beautiful smile.  Her few happy moments lighten The Kiss several notches. Her character, Irene Guarry, is fully aware that her teenage admirer, Pierre Lasalle, is just a boy, yet is charmed by his silly yet sincere attraction toward her. And at 21, actor Lew Ayres likely understood Pierre's feelings. (Garbo was only 24 but a decade and a half more sophisticated.)

"I love suffering with you."

Irene's secret lover, Andre Dubail, played by Conrad Nagel, is, understandably, as miserable as her. Whether meeting secretly in museums or on the patio outside a party, the two don't enjoy each other as they do wallow in the impossibility of their situation. While 1929 audiences enjoyed suffering with Garbo and Nagel, cynics like me shout, Why did you get married to the old goat to begin with?!  

And while Irene offers to run away with her lover, Andre plays the noble sap with the reminder that it will cost her her place in society. Oh, please. If you want sympathy from me, you're going to have to do better than the possibility of losing your invitations to afternoon tea.

Charles prepares to beat Charles to death with what seems
to be a very large turkey bone.

Irene's husband, Charles, is no picnic. Older than Irene by three decades, and heavier by a couple hundred pounds, Charles has a short fuse and the face of a constipated bulldog. And, unbeknownst to his wife, he's currently on the verge of bankruptcy, thus making whatever marriage material he might have been utterly nil. 

This is why my heart makes no emotional room for The Kiss. Here's a beautiful, classy woman who knowingly married an ogre -- for what? Money? Her lover, Andre, is a successful lawyer for God's sakes! Just in terms of judgement, this dame is no catch.

Jacques Feyder reminds Garbo that if you're on
trial for your life, you might as well be
glamorous.

I mean, she winds up on trial for the murder of her husband with Andre defending her, Pierre's father lying under oath to make it look like Charles killed himself, and Pierre sniveling in the gallery. The things some guys will do for a woman!

What's most impressive about the France-located The Kiss is that all the bit players and most of the extras look European. Far more than the all-American Lew Ayres, for instance, or even the debonair Conrad Nagel. Yup, I even look at extras who have been dead since before I was born.

 

 

If you consider a tinny
orchestra, phone, and a thump
thrilling.

 

The Kiss, released in December 1929, was Garbo's and M-G-M's final silent movie. Silent, that is, except for a synchronized score, a ringing phone, and what sounds like a suitcase falling over in replication of a gunshot.

I don't know if Garbo's performance in The Kiss is held in the same high regard as her others. Frankly, I got more of a thrill when I found myself just standing next to her in Manhattan 40 years ago while waiting to cross the street. (Never underestimate the long-lasting power of a legend.)

What I find interesting about The Kiss is the fate of her co-stars. Conrad Nagel would soon go from being Garbo's lover to B-movies like Yellow Cargo. Lew Ayres appeared to have better luck the following year in the classic All Quiet on the Western Front, while, as with Nagel, eventually moving to Bs like Metro's Dr. Kildare pictures.

Garbo got out while the going was good, retiring in 1941. But she's got only one star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, while Ayres has two and Nagel has three plus an honorary Academy Award. So who's the real star of The Kiss?

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A review of Conrad Nagel's Yellow Cargo can be found here.

A review of Lew Ayres' The Strange Case of Dr. Kildare can be found here.

 
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