Friday, February 12, 2010

A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS (1928).


A Woman of Affairs (1928). Drama. Director: Clarence Brown. Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbet, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Lewis Stone. The film was based on a 1924 play by Michael Arlen, The Green Hat. Later renamed, A Woman of Affairs. This was Greta Garbo's 14th film, the 7th of her Hollywood career and her 6th silent movie. It was also her 3rd collaboration with John Gilbert, after Flesh and the Devil (1926) and Love (1927), her 2nd film with Clarence Brown and was the 1st of seven collaborations between Garbo and Lewis Stone. In 1934, MGM made a remake of the film starring Constance Bennett, titled Outcast Lady.


Diana Merrick, falls in love with aristocratic Neville Holderness, but respecting his fathers wishes they do not marry. Heartbroken and living a reckless life, Diana marries her brother's friend, David Furness, unaware that he is a thief. On their honeymoon, learning that the police are after him, David jumps out a window and kills himself.



Diana makes it her mission to repay the victims of her husband. After a few years she returns to England, to find her brother has died from alcoholism. When Neville finds Diana, she turns him away, because he is still influenced by his father and he is now married. She is heartbroken, never to recover.


One of my favorite scenes, is when Diana is wearing a special ring on her finger, sitting on the couch with Neville, Diana tells him, "I would only take it off for the man I love." then you see her hand just as the ring slowly slips off her finger. The costumes and hairstyles are wonderful and Garbo looked amazing.

Dorothy Sebastian (April 26, 1903 – April 8, 1957). Her first contact in Hollywood was Robert Kane, who gave her a film test at United Studios. She performed in George White's Scandals with Joan Crawford and Anita Page for a popular series of MGM romantic dramas: Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). Sebastian also performed in 1929's Spite Marriage, cast opposite her then-lover Buster Keaton.

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