Alas, despite Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's advertising spiel, Romance is not one of Greta Garbo's greatest movies! Not Greta's fault! She is wonderful, but the dialogue is often impossibly silly and Clarence Brown's direction is quite obviously inhibited by the demands made by the sound recording specialists. Right at the beginning of the movie, for instance, we are treated to an effective but wholly superfluous montage of noise. And when the movie itself finally gets going, we are treated to a series of extremely long takes – almost all of them filmed from a camera that has been nailed to the walls and floor of the sound recording booth. Admittedly, in non-dialogue scenes, there is some quite effective camera movement. It's a tribute to Garbo and the rest of the cast that they often surmount the sound recording problems as well as the banality of the scenario prepared by Bess Meredyth and Edwin Justus Mayer. The really effective lines are no doubt derived from Edward Sheldon's stage play. Fortunately, as noted above, Garbo surmounts all the problems. She is, as usual, truly magnificent. Gavin Gordon must also be commended. He plays the sanctimonious rector as if to the manner born. I particularly admire the way he changes the timbre of his voice when he reverts from old age to young man. The rest of the players are never less than competent – with the one exception of Elliott Nugent, who is just plain awful. On the other side of the camera, I must also really commend William Daniels for his superb photography, Cedric Gibbons for his moody sets, and Adrian for his attractive costumes. Finally, I may be wrong in this, but adjusting for inflation, the 1913 stage play by Edward Sheldon probably still holds the world's record for the most successful straight stage drama ever produced. It ran for two years on Broadway with Doris Keane as Rita Cavallini and then transferred to London where Doris Keene repeated her New York success for a staggering four years! Sigmund Romberg wrote a musical based on the play which opened on Broadway in 1948, starring Anne Jeffreys.
Review of Romance
