User Reviews

Love is a better than you expect silent film romance.

There are a few remarkable qualities a film lover will encounter in Love. Foremost is how little the emotional impact of Love has faded over the years (relative to other silent films). Often silent films are enjoyable because they have aged and we can delight in their quaint or old-fashioned sensibility, laughing while comparing how much movies and pop culture have changed. Love, however, has largely maintained its original affect, which is particularly amazing given it is a sentimental tear-jerker romance, a genre that ages, perhaps, lest well. These eighty years later we still can related to the feelings of both Captain Count Alexei Vronsky (John Gilbert) and Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo) while we root for their love. Of course there are plenty of moments, originally dramatic, that are now laughable, but over all the film has age well. (Most odd is the depiction of Anna and her son's love. Today it plays with disturbingly incestuous overtones. I do not know how it played in 1927.)

The second striking feature, also related to how well this film has aged, is how beautiful Greta Garbo appears. Like many elements in silent films, standards are beauty may not translate across generations. Actors and actresses considered amazingly beautiful in the teens and twenties may no longer satisfy the modern movie star equivalent. Garbo, however, is still strikingly, obviously beautiful.

The final striking feature is a bit of trivia – there are two endings to Love, an American ending and a European. The difference in endings is striking in that the same divergent choices would probably be made today. The European ending is bleak, tragic and emotionally effective, as Anna steps in front of the rushing train rather than live without her lover and son. Further, it is the ending in the original text, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The American ending is predictable, saccharine and laughable. Americans in 1927, like American today, want their romances to end with all the loose ends tided up, all the obstacles overcome, and all our couples marring to live happily ever after.

Story Synopsis: Love is based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina meets Captain Count Alexei Vronsky in a terrible blizzard late one afternoon and he helps her to shelter. He is instantly smitten, but she rejects him. Vronsky helps Anna back to the Czarist court and her husband, Senator Alexei Karenina. Vronsky too is part of the court, the top assistant to the Grand Duke. Vronsky and Anna continue to meet at various events: official functions, dances, wolf hunts. Eventually they fall hopelessly in love. The court is abuzz as it is obvious to all who see Vronsky and Anna that they are attracted to each other. Karenina cold and authoritarian, warns Anna of court gossip and commands she at least be inconspicuous and avoid public scandal. Anna and Vronsky try a number of times to stop seeing each but their love is overpowering. Eventually they abscond to Italy, rejecting their former lives to live as lovers. Anna, however, cannot bare being away from her son. When she returns Karenina refuses to allow Anna to visit her son again. Further, Anna finds out that Vronsky is going to be dismissed from his military post because of their affair. Realizing how awful that would be for Vronsky she makes a deal with his commander: if she leaves St. Petersburg forever Vronsky will retain his post. She decides to leave on the next train, sacrificing her happiness for Vronsky's. But Anna cannot bear the thought of leaving both her lover and her adored son. Instead of riding her train into exile she steps in front of it to her death. The ending is sudden, shocking, and effective. A surprisingly poignant ending to a film of pleasant surprises.

American Ending: Years later Vronsky happens upon Anna and her son. Vronsky has maintained his high military post, Anna's husband is dead, mother and son are together, Anna and Vronsky still love each and will surely soon marry now that they have re-found each other. And we have "happily ever after'.

This silent film has the famous lovers John Gilbert and Greta Garbo as Captain Count Alexei Vronsky and Anna Karenina, respectively. The two meet during a blizzard. Anna's carriage is detained because of it, and she has to stay the night in a nearby inn, with her travel there assisted by Count Vronsky. Her face has been covered up because of the blizzard, but once inside the inn she uncovers her face and Vronsky is instantly smitten. Even the maid at the inn feels the chemistry between the two and places Vronsky's and Anna's things in the same room, believing them to be married. There is one impediment to the pair's happiness though - Anna is married to a senator and has a son by him. Any spark that was ever there has gone out of the marriage, but Anna feels a duty to her station in life and above all, her son. Vronsky and Anna keep running into each other at government functions until they can no longer stop themselves, ultimately running off to Italy together. However, Anna has had to leave her son behind at the insistence of her husband, and soon she finds herself missing him. Once back in Russia, Vronsky's superior officer visits Anna and tells her that Vronsky will be thrown out of the service if the affair continues. She agrees to leave him if it will save Vronsky's career. There are two endings that were released with this film - a happy ending in America, and a sad one abroad. Here you are getting the happy ending.

There is only one way to see this film, and that is the Warner Archive DVD-R, and I describe that product here because you might not like what you get. The visual quality of the film is good, even if it is a bit soft looking. However, the deal breaker is probably the soundtrack. The score was recorded at a live performance, and the music chosen is good enough. However, the music was recorded at a college showing of this film. In any audience you would probably hear the occasional coughing in the background. Here, though, you'll hear loud laughter whenever the crowd finds something funny, and they apparently find something funny quite often and at the most inappropriate times, such as the first time Vronsky sees Anna's face and smiles at her. It just ruins the mood of the whole film. The audience was probably filled with teenagers with nothing better to do on this particular night.

I would highly recommend the film, but the score and the "sound effects" will probably leave you feeling taken if you buy the actual Warner Archive product.

This is a wonderfully filmed movie! The only problem that I could possibly find with it is that it really isn't ANNA KARENINA, it would have made an excellent film just on its own. The Happy Ending probably holds up better today than back in the 1920's and was a welcome after the sad separation. The best parts as the scenes between Garbo and Gilbert. I didn't quit get the scenes with De Lacy, although the birthday reunion scene was very sentimental. Luckily the film also has a few laughs, Gilbert burning himself on the lighted flint, the Holy Lamp that goes out when Garbo opens the door to find Gilbert and especially her reactions. What's best is that it is only 82 minutes long. I did not understand the character of the Grand Duchesse, she not on that long, nor Brandon Hurst's Karenine, they were both excellent, its just that the real life of the picture is truly Gilbert and Garbo. I'm so glad John Gilbert is finally being brought back, perhaps mostly do to the 100th birthday of Garbo, but at least this great and talented actor is at last being given some of the praise he is due. Hopefully more of his films will be shown on TCM and YOUTUBE. Perhaps even some talkies! Thank you to everyone who have made is easier to see John Gilbert films!

The ending was stupid. Anna's inspiration inspired a real history and it was this history that inspired Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina. If that history we would never have Anna Karenina.

On January 4, 1872, at 7 pm, an unknown, well-dressed young woman, arriving at the Yasenki Moscow-Kursk railway in Krapivensky County, climbed onto the tracks at the time of the passing of freight train number 77, blessed if and threw itself on the tracks under the train, and was cut in half. Tolstoy and his wife Sofia knew the "young unknown person" from the news. It was Anna Stepanovna Pirogova, the thirty-five-year-old lover and governess of one of Tolstoy's closest neighbors, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Bibikov, a forty-nine-year-old landowner and widower. Bibikov lived with his mistress, but started to prefer the family's German nanny, whom he wanted to marry. When Anna Stepanovna was informed, she ran on her way in pain and despair with some clothes on, and sped around the next three days out of her own with sadness. Then she threw herself in front of a freight train at Yasenki station.

(Possible SPOILERS) I'm glad to see this forgotten film receiving praise here from fans; I echo Silntfan's sentiments about Gilbert--this is the movie that made me suddenly realize he was a good actor. He didn't seem like the same actor from "Flesh and the Devil" and "A Woman of Affairs." My favorite silent Garbo film is still the light, stylish "The Kiss," but "Love" impressed me greatly.

By the way, various sources (Maltin's book, the TCM host) claim this 1927 version is "modern". Yet it's set in Czarist Russia, which is not modern for 1927! In fact, nothing in the film indicates it's not a 19th Century setting--they don't drive cars, they don't go to movies, they don't have telephones, etc. You might argue that Garbo's fashions are modern, but that just means they're anachronistic for the Czarist era, not that the whole setting is modern. What's really modern is the ending, and that's what I want to praise.

It came as a breathtaking shock to me, since I had no prior knowledge of it. The TCM print ends with a happy resolution. Then we see a notice that this was the American ending, and next comes the tragic ending shown in Europe. This film's tragic ending of Anna K (well-known) is abrupt and unconvincing (unlike every other scene in this film, so well-directed by Edmund Goulding).

At the risk of being a literary heretic, I must say the happy ending is better! I know we're supposed to sneer at Hollywood's desecration of great literature, and we're supposed to be swept up in the romantic tragedy of sacrifice, how noble or self-pitying it is. But frankly, the classic ending is a revolt against reason. In fact, it's a conventional moralistic punishment for a supposedly strong heroine. The happy ending, in which people actually behave with sense, is subversive because Anna gets to have her adulterous beefcake and eat it too. Call it a crass commercial decision if you will, but it's exactly what Tolstoy couldn't have published in the 19th Century, and what Hollywood couldn't have done after the Production Code crackdown in 1934--which is probably as much why the 1935 remake is tragic as any special allegiance to Tolstoy. The high 20s was the right window to tell the story sensibly.

Despite being a lover of the novel Anna Karenina, I can accept and excuse many of the changes to the story that are necessary when adapting a novel of it's length and breadth. I also love Garbo and John Gilbert and they are wonderful here.

The part of the story I have trouble with is not even the ending. It is the removal of the entire motivation for Anna's self-destructiveness. In this version She has to be the self-sacrificing saint who will give up Vronsky because she loves him so much. Tolstoy's portrayal of Anna as a loving attractive person who resists Vronsky but who eventually succumbs to his love and is destroyed by the guilt over her son, her sorrow over losing her social position, and her grief over the loss of Vronsky's love is necessary to this story.

. We are expected to believe that she has lost her son and reputation and that now she will give up Vronsky entirely to save him. Neither her suicide in the European version nor the happily ever after Hollywood version take into account what a real woman would have done.

The talking version that Garbo did is a much more faithful to what is driving Anna. I 3recommend seeing it and then reading the book.

Also, about the version which was recorded live and has the odd moments of inappropriate laughter. I found it hard to believe that the music was supposed to be live. It was very repetitious as if it was on a loop.

What differentiates Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Dostoievsky from many writers is that their books are not only an artistic work, but have reflections, not being art for art, but art having a purpose. It is not limited only to entertain, but to teach. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy opposes the adulterous couple who are Anna and Vronsky with their model couple who are Kitty and Levin. Tolstoy was inspired by the suicide of adulteress Anna Stepanova Bibikov for the suicide of Anna who, full of guilt and regret for abandoning her son, kills herself. While Hollywood ignores even the logic of real life to create fantasy escapists for audiences like Isabella of France and Willian Wallace in Braveheart. They never met in real life. Tolstoy, different from the garbage that is published today, does bring moralistic messages to reflect, that is why I value and criticize the promiscuous human conduct. Anna killed herself because of guilt, she could have been abandoned by Vronsky after he met a beautiful French girl and abandoned Anna. Remember Gwynplaine when he was seduced by Duchess Josiane in the man Who laughs, then regrets it. Ana simply regrets her choice and realizes that she made a bad choice when she was abandoned. Love (1927) is from the tradition of great books turned into cheap feuilleton like The hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) that ignores Victor Hugo's messages about not trusting seducers like Esmeralda did with Phoebus for a cliché ending for the audience accustomed to feuilleton low quality and shallow. The film ignores the messages and reflections of the book for a superficial "happy ending" for an audience not accustomed to reading classics, but pulp fictions.

All the psychological complexity of the story was eliminated in the film and it became a trite love story.

The History of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev and Elena Denisyeva inspired Tolstoy to develop the relationship between Anna and vronsky The dramatic love story of Tyutchev is the young mistress Elena Denisyeva, a pupil of the institute where Tyutchev's daughters studied. To meet with her, the poet rented a separate apartment and, when the secret connection became apparent, he practically created a second family. For 14 years, Tyutchev, as it already happened once, was torn between two beloved women - a legal and "civil" spouse - unsuccessfully tried to make peace with the first and could not part with the second. But Elena suffered from this destructive passion much more: her father, friends abandoned her, it was possible to forget about the maid of honor's career - all doors were closed to her from now on.

Under the yoke of human disapproval, Denisyeva developed morbid irritability and irascibility. She came to religion but could not reconcile its principles with her position. Elena Tyutcheva loved passionately, madly and demandingly, so she suffered when her lover went weeks without visiting her.

All jealousy, Anna's insecurities that were inspired by Elena Denisyeva, were eliminated and Anna became a character without depth.

All of Tolstoy's sophisticated prose has been replaced by a coarse romanticism.

Horrible and simplistic movie from Tolstoy's classic.

A banal and shallow film compared to the book and in real life in the relationship between Anna Timiryova and Admirla Kolchak.

If you really want a story with a strong passion, but sme the simplism and banality like this film, look for Real History and the strong passion between Anna Timiryova and Admiral Kolchak.

Watch the movie/series Admiral (2008).

The film does not focus on the life of Anna Timiryova after Kolchak's death - she has been arrested six times and spent long years in the Gulag. But she always remembered the two tragic years when she was able to be with her lover.

The lyrics of the theme song are one of Anna Timiryova's poems. Unfortunately a film cannot focus on poetry, but it should be remembered that the Timiryova's poems have been compared to the poetry of Boris Pasternak.