Young actress Greta Garbo was tired and homesick for her native Sweden after she had journeyed to America to appear in two MGM movies. While filming her previous movie, 1926's "The Temptress," she was told her sister had died. When she asked studio executives if they could allow her some time to attend the funeral, they refused her request. Then Garbo's director Swedish friend Mauritz Stiller was removed from "The Temptress." With a paltry weekly salary in comparison to other actresses at her level, Garbo was financially struggling and gave serious thought of backing out of her next film. When she revealed her sentiments to a studio executive, she received a strongly-worded letter from MGM threatening to end her career as an actress if she didn't cooperate.
After some considerable thinking and advice from friends, she did report to the movie set for her next film, January 1927's "Flesh and the Devil." She began the filming in a deep funk until the day where she was appearing in a train station scene with lead actor John Gilbert, whom she never met. Once they were introduced and shot that station scene as well as the day's scheduled intimate kissing sequences, Garbo suddenly forgot most of her troubles.
"I don't know how I should have managed if I had not been cast opposite John Gilbert," recalled Garbo three years later. "If he had not come into my life at this time, I should probably have gone home to Sweden at once, my American career over."
As one account goes, the veteran actor was bowled over by her vulnerability and took a personal interest in coaching her as filming progressed. It help that the "Flesh and the Devil" was loaded with intimate love scenes between the two of them. During one particularly passionate shot, director Clarence Brown witnessed the pair's budding relationship right before his eyes. He decided that instead of yelling cut to wrap up the scene, he motioned to his lighting and camera crew members to quietly leave the set as the two were still kissing. A few hours later, as Gilbert and Garbo continued their snuggling on the set, studio personnel brought in their dinner. By the conclusion of the movie's shoot, the two had moved in together.
Garbo's radiance shines through on screen as director Brown called for a number of close-ups, taking advantage of the actress's stunning looks. One reviewer described, "she gave a more erotic performance than Hollywood had ever seen."
"Flesh and the Devil," based on the 1894 Hermann Sudermann novel, 'The Undying Past,' was a perfect vehicle for the two new lovers. Garbo plays the wife, Felicitas, of an aging count who catches Leo (Gilbert), a German soldier, making kissy with his wife. Variety called that love-making scene and two others contained in the film hair raising. "There are three loves scenes in this picture that will make anyone fidget in their seat and their hair rise on end," said the trade magazine. The count loses a duel to Leo, who's sent to Africa for a few years as punishment. Meantime, his best friend, Ulrich (Lars Hanson) is asked by Leo to take care of Felicitas. He not only does that-he does more: the two fall in love and get married. When Leo returns and discovers what took place, well things get a little sticky.
The key line in the movie is when a church pastor, during a sermon, says 'When the devil cannot reach us through the spirit, he creates a woman beautiful enough to reach us through the flesh." The portrait of Felicitas fits the pastor's description of her to a tee. "Flesh and the Devil" was a pivotal movie in Garbo's career. Her performance was nearly universally praised, with one critic writing, "Audiences were mesmerized by her beauty and titillated by her love scenes with Gilbert. She was a sensation." Garbo received a tremendous bump in her salary with the box office profits rolling in. Soon, the actress' movies returned 12 per cent of all MGMs annual revenues at the height of her career, a tremendous amount for one actress.
