A Woman of Affairs (1928)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Michael Arlen's "The Green Hat" was the most sensational novel of its time. In 1924, the year it was published, it was the top selling novel. The story of a wild young widow with a notorious past, it bought London's Mayfair of the 1920s to life with it's rich tapestry of characters. It also shocked readers with allusions to homosexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. When MGM (of all studios) decided to make a movie of the novel - the name of the book or any allusion to it was not to be mentioned, hence the name "A Woman of Affairs". And it was definitely cleaned up.Diana, David and Neville have been friends since childhood, but Diana and Neville had a special bond. Diana Merrick (Greta Garbo) and her dissipated brother Jeffry (Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.) are determined to live their lives in the pursuit of pleasure, earning them a bad reputation. Jeffry worships David (Johnny Mack Brown) and is drinking himself to death because of what he perceives is Diana's offhand treatment of David. Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. gives the performance of his young career as the alcoholic Jeffry (in the book he and Diana were twins). Jeffry has an unhealthy hero-worship of David and Fairbanks seems to really get inside his character.Neville (John Gilbert) is offered a post in Egypt and is eager to take it as it means he and Diana can be married when he returns. Diana believes his father has organised the job to part them as he is very disapproving of her lifestyle. They decide to elope but Neville's father hears of it, hurries him off to Egypt and so prevents the marriage. Years of waiting has Diana turning to David. They marry but Diana does not return his love. He commits suicide on their honeymoon and it is implied that he has found out something horrible about her past. The title says "He died for - decency" and Diana puts up with a lot of allegations and rumour.Years pass and Diana is back in London to visit her critically ill brother, who has never recovered from David's death and is drinking himself into an early grave. Neville is about to marry giddy Constance (pretty Dorothy Sebastian), who proves during the film that she has just as much character and honour as the rest of them. Dr. Hugh Trevelyan (Lewis Stone) has always been Diana's protector and supporter and it is he who informs her of her brother's death (she has spent the night at Nevilles).Diana suffers a nervous breakdown and I think it is this hospital scene in which Greta Garbo lifts this film to it's highest sphere. Neville has sent roses to her room but when Diana awakes and finds them gone she deliriously wanders through the hospital in search of them. "I woke up - and you weren't there" says Diana as she crushes the flowers in her arms. Everyone in the scene (Gilbert, Sebastian, Stone) seems transfixed as Garbo goes through this astonishing performance. The film is not over yet. Sir Morton Holderness (Hobart Bosworth), Neville's father has never held a very high opinion of Diana. He learns the real reason for David's suicide - he was an embezzler and Diana gave up her reputation for his honour - not to mention paying off his debts secretly. For the last time Diana proves she is a "gallant lady" by driving her car into the tree that had always symbolized her and Neville's love and leaving Neville and Constance free to begin their lives together.Greta Garbo is mesmerizing - you can't watch anyone else while she is on the screen. John Gilbert shows none of the personality and passion that characterizes his acting - he definitely takes a backseat to Garbo in this movie. In case you are wondering the exquisite Anita Louise plays Diana as a child. Director Clarence Brown did a wonderful job with a scenario which couldn't be faithful to the book to appease the vigilant censor.Highly, Highly Recommended.

I love silent films but I will be the first to admit that some plots from the early days of film tend to look a bit old fashioned and silly today. While A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS is definitely still watchable, it sure doesn't age well and today many who watch it will find the plot silly--I know I sure did! Despite the presence of the often overrated Greta Garbo, this film lacks believability. Don't believe any reviews that give this film astronomically high ratings simply because they love Garbo--the script is just too flawed to merit scores of 9 or 10.Greta and John Gilbert are in love. However, her family and his are enemies and John's father does his best to keep them apart. John is a bit of a weenie and reluctantly agrees to listen to his dad and take a job in Egypt instead of marrying Garbo. In his mind, he intends to work and make his fortune, then return to marry her. Naturally, though, this absence destroyed their plans and eventually both marry others.She marries a man who turns out to be an embezzler and kills himself on their wedding night. They don't even get a chance to consummate their marriage. However, and this makes no sense at all, Greta spends the rest of the movie being true to her husband--preserving his image as a nice guy. Without telling people, she manages to pay off all his debts and allows everyone to think she drove him to suicide (which, by the way, was really cool to watch)! This was dumb because there was no legitimate reason for this self-sacrifice--especially when Greta's brother (played by a young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) refuses to ever talk with her or see her again and pretty much everyone else treats her like a leper. Heck, when Gilbert marries, it's AFTER this incident--if he'd known the truth, he and Garbo surely would have married. Garbo could easily have told everyone--thus avoiding LOTS of trouble and such glaring holes can't be ignored. Later, however, Garbo's one true friend tells Gilbert and his nasty father the truth and everyone agrees that she's a living saint and everyone (including the wife) give Gilbert permission to divorce and marry Garbo!!! Talk about contrived and stupid! So if the plot is so bad and tough to believe, why does it still earn a 6? Well, the film is lovely to look at due to nice cinematography. Also, the acting is good and they make the most of a convoluted and dopey plot. Plus, while nowadays you'd laugh at such silly and contrived plotting, for 1928 it wasn't so bad--audiences made allowances for such plot devices.Also, note that because this film came out before the new tougher Production Code it was grittier and had plot elements that would not have been allowed if they film had come out in 1934. Starting that year, Hollywood needed to have permission to show such violent deaths or talk positively about divorce--something that they never would have granted.

A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS (MGM, 1928), directed by Clarence Brown, from the then controversial novel, "The Green Hat" by Michael Arlen, reunites then popular love team of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in their third collaboration on screen. Initially teamed under Clarence Brown's direction in the highly popular FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926), followed by LOVE (1927), taken from the Leo Tolstoy's classic novel, "Anna Karenina," Gilbert and Garbo once more star in a silent melodrama about love and tragedy. Unlike their earlier screen efforts, their characters in this story are already acquainted since childhood, leaving no chance of meeting and falling in love, but the difference here is that their relationship is interfered by a third party who happens not to be another lover or spouse. And unlike their earlier two films, Garbo is more the central focus here than Gilbert.The story begins quite amusingly, finding the wild and merry Diana Merrick (Greta Garbo) driving recklessly down the road in the Mack Sennett Keystone comedy fashion, nearly missing the ditch diggers as she drives over them. Moments later, the characters in the story, the Holderness and the Merricks, are introduced with each passing scene. Diane is a carefree woman who has loved Neville Holderness (John Gilbert) since childhood. She has a brother, Jeffry (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), a pampered youth who's so bored with his life that his only satisfaction is boozing up with liquor. Jeffry's closest friend, David Furness (Johnny Mack Brown), tries to stop him from his wild and wicked ways, but to no avail. Neville's father, Sir Morton (Hobart Bosworth), disapproves of the Merrick family's way of life. When he learns that his son wants to marry Diana, he manages to send Neville away to Egypt for a few years, in hope that the two will forget one another through the passage of time. Two years later, Diana marries David. On their wedding night, detectives (one of them played by character actor Fred Kelsey) enter their honeymoon suite in France to arrest David on the charges of theft. Before he can be arrested, David ends his life by jumping out the window. To keep David's name clear for decency sake, she secretly sets out to repay the victims of David's past crimes, a deed only known to the family physician, Doctor Hugh Trevelyan (Lewis Stone). Over the next few years, Diana makes the gossip columns as being a widow of many love affairs throughout the world. As for Neville, he becomes engaged to marry a nice young girl named Constance (Dorothy Sebastian), whom, as Diana describes through the title cards, as a girl "whose eyes are so true and clean." But Old Man Holderness, knowing how his son and Diana still feel about one other, continues to keep the scandalous Diana away his son, causing Neville to become like Jeffry, an unbearable alcoholic.While not as famous by today's standards as FLESH AND THE DEVIL, A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS somewhat predates those "Peyton Place"-type soap-operas or Lana Turner melodramas quite popular during the 1950s and 60s. It also shows that aristocratic families may have all the luxuries that money can buy, but money does not always buy happiness. Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s portrayal as an unhappy youth who turns to drink, is quite believable, especially when his glassy eyes, uncombed hair almost covering a portion of his eye, with whiskey glass in his hand that at times has him resemble a young John Barrymore. Whether this was intentional or not will never be known. Fairbanks, however, does well with his early screen performance.Clarence Brown's direction with the Gilbert-Garbo loves scenes do have some bonuses, but are not as "hot" as in FLESH AND THE DEVIL. One scene that stands out is finding Diana, wearing a special ring on her finger, making love to Neville on the couch, with Diana telling him, "I would only take it off for the man I love." The camera then pans down to her hand just as the ring slowly slips off her finger. As for the story itself, it takes place during a span of ten years, yet the characters in the plot don't look any different in the conclusion as they appear in the opening, making the storyline look more as if it takes place in a span of ten months than ten years. The costumes and hairstyles are obviously modern late 1920s, which works out better in the latter portion of the story than the early segments, circa 1918. And although Garbo has that special beauty, especially when properly photographed, she doesn't look particularly attractive in some of those costumes designed for her, mainly when wearing those flapper-designed hats. Essentially a silent movie that was initially distributed in theaters with recorded scoring, one wishes such a score for this film have been used for its current video distribution, which comes with a Thames stereo orchestral soundtrack. The stereo score has its moments, but when it comes to its slow tempo violin playing in some segments of the story, it becomes a real sleep inducer. A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS was remade by MGM in 1934 as OUTCAST LADY starring Constance Bennett and Herbert Marshall. Both versions are available for viewing on cable TV's Turner Classic Movies.One final note: A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS was one of the 13 feature films presented on the public television series, MOVIES, GREAT MOVIES (Original air date: October 26, 1973), a 50th anniversary tribute to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer of the silent era, as hosted by Richard Schickel, on WNET, Channel 13, in New York City. Clocked then at 109 minutes, the TCM print differs in scoring and length, either at 98 (Thames) or 91 minutes. (***)

A soap opera on the grand scale with the great screen team of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. Like many "fallen women" of her period, Garbo's not "bad," but "misunderstood."