jacobs-greenwood Greta Garbo plays the title role, a beautiful woman who destroys all who come in contact with her. The film boasts a brand new score, written by Michael Picton of New York, winner of TCM's fifth annual Young Film Composers competition.The film begins with Elena (Garbo) meeting and falling in love with Robledo (Antonio Moreno) at a masquerade ball in Paris. They spend the night together in a park, declaring their love for one another, he giving her a ring, before departing. The next day, Robledo calls on a friend, the Marquis de Torre Bianca (Armand Caliz). Evidently, Robledo has been working in Argentina and had just returned to town. The Marquis introduces Robledo to his wife which, to his surprise, is Elena. He is disillusioned and upset. Wanting nothing more to do with her, he leaves.Elena and the Marquis have been invited to a party, thrown in her honor, by a banker named Fontenoy (Marc McDermott). Seated around a large dinner table, Fontenoy (at the head of the table with Elena on his right) stands and proposes a toast. It will be his last, as he launches into a diatribe against Elena, labeling her a "temptress", blaming her for his financial ruin, he drains his glass (which he had previously filled with poison) and collapses on the table.Back at their home, the Marquis, who had encouraged his wife's affair with Fontenoy, informs Elena that he too is overwhelmed with debt. Distraught over the incident and the departure of Robledo, she empties her jewel box, giving all that she received from Fontenoy to the Marquis. Robledo arrives to comfort his friend and tell him that he is returning to Argentina. As he is leaving, Elena tries to convince him that she really does loves him, but he doesn't and departs.When Robledo returns to Argentina, he receives a hardy reception from the whole town, especially associates Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) & Pirovani (Robert Anderson). We learn that these men have escaped their financial troubles, and women, back home by traveling to this remote country to spearhead the construction of a dam. Their efforts are being stalled by a local bandit Manos Duras (Roy D'Arcy) and his men.Low and behold, the Marquis shows up to visit Robledo, and he has brought Elena. He tells Robledo he had no choice since she financed the trip. Elena dresses formally for dinner and every other occasion, showing up the local shoeless women and entrancing all the men. Manos, who observed her arrival, comes to Robledo's one evening to serenade Elena. Though, up to this point, Robledo had shown nothing but disdain for her, he fights Manos to protect her honor. Even though they use whips, with which Manos is a master, Robledo wins. After which, alone with Elena as she tends to his wounds, Robledo denies that his actions were a sign that he loves her. And Manos, still seething from his loss in the fight, returns to shoot Robledo but kills the Marquis instead.Free from marriage, Elena has distracted the men. Robledo's associates Canterac and Pirovani have even forgotten about their women back home. One night, the town throws a party in her honor, during which Canterac kills Pirovani with his sword over Elena. Manos, who had not lost sight of the larger fight of stopping the foreigners from completing their project, chooses that night to dynamite the dam.There are some pretty good special effects, given the year of the film, and some exciting action sequences as Robledo and the men try to repair the damage before it floods. However, they are not successful and a tired, nearly drowned Robledo returns to find Elena. Though at first he tries to kill her, he finds that he cannot and, with his resistance low, he succumbs, declaring that he is beaten and that he does love her. As he sleeps, and though she had insisted to Robledo that she had never used the word "love" with anyone else, she leaves him, with a note telling him that she will not be his ruin.Six years later, the dam is completed and the engineer Robledo is back in Paris being lauded for his success by a crowd of people, his fiancée on his arm. As they are climbing into a cab, however, Robledo sees a women in the crowd that he thinks is Elena. He follows her, finding her in a cafe, where he buys her a drink. He is surprised that she doesn't seem to remember him, and soon leaves. Elena then has a vision, that a man across the cafe is actually Jesus Christ, halo and all. It is then revealed that she has kept Robledo's ring, the one he had given her that first night they met. She gives to the man and the film ends with her walking away, alone down the street.

non_sportcardandy Not for or against Garbo but I have no interest to view every minute of one of her films.For the most part I will fast forward her movies only stopping if something of interest catches my attention.While skimming over this film I had to stop and view the entrance of Manos Duras(hard hands)played by Roy D'Arcy.It's really something the way silent films went the extra mile to give visual entertainment.The garb of D'Arcy instantly makes him a villain standout as he swaggers on to the screen.His appearance is somewhere in between Zorro overdressed or Zorro on crack.Along with having a gang he's a one man gang himself ready to use most anything that will cause injury.He and his guitar players are not to be missed.As for Garbo....she says her body is only wanted.That's as accurate as it gets.

Neil Doyle I watched this for the first time on TCM with an original musical score by Michael Picton and was fascinated by the score and Garbo's stunning appearance. I'm not a Garbo fan and some of her films are really hard to enjoy by today's standards of film-making (and acting), but this one is watchable enough even though it drags occasionally.It's gorgeously photographed and Garbo is given the royal camera treatment. In fact, she's treated royally by everyone except the man she loves who discovers too soon that in matters of love, she has a strange code of conduct. Well worth viewing if you're a fan of Garbo's films. Otherwise, you may not make it to the finale since it's rather overlong for such a simple story.Handsomely produced. Antoneo Moreno is interesting in the male lead.

lugonian THE TEMPTRESS (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1926), personally directed by Fred Niblo, from the novel by Vicente Blasco-Ibanez, stars Swedish actress Greta Garbo in her second Hollywood production, following her American debut in THE TORRENT (1926), and the first to place her name on top of the casting credits. As with her MGM debut, Garbo plays a girl of Spanish origin (this was the last to do so), and like so many films that were to follow, especially during the silent era and early talkies, she would portray a woman (usually unhappily married) who satisfies her emotions with illicit affairs, finding the one man she truly cares about, and destroys those around her before reaching bottom herself, committing suicide, or both. THE TEMPTRESS would set such a pattern.The story opens in Paris at a masquerade party where the unhappy Elena (Garbo) meets Manuel Robledo (Antonio Moreno), an Argentine engineer. After removing their masks, they fall in love under the stars. Later when he comes to visit his friend, Marques De Torre Bianca (Armand Kaliz), Manuel is stunned to learn that his wife happens to be Elena. At the dinner party, Marquis Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott), a middle-aged banker permitted by Bianca to have Elena be his mistress in order for them to be financially secure, distracts the guests by making a startling speech on how Elena, the temptress, has ruined his life, and dropping dead at the table after taking his drink of poison. Disgusted by the ugly truth, Manuel decides to forget Elena by leaving for the Argentine where he accepts a water dam building project. Just as Manuel is slowly forgetting Elena, she arrives with her husband, and by doing so, causes frustration and destruction to both men, and others as well, with Manuel, who feels she to be responsible for the murder of his friend and husband, as well as the near destruction of his dam dynamited by his enemy, finds he still cannot resist her.The supporting players include Lionel Barrymore as Canterac, one of the construction workers who falls victim to Elena; Robert Anderson as Pirovani, the friend Canterac kills because of Elena; and Virginia Browne-Faire as Celinda, the pretty young girl who silently loves Manuel. Adding to sin and destruction is Roy D'Arcy as Manos Duros, the bandit leader, in a menacing performance as Manuel's arch enemy who, after forcing his intentions on Elena, is challenged by Manuel to a duel, with the bandit's method being the use of whips. The bull whip duel is one of the high points in the story, resulting to whip scars on the bare torsos covered with blood, as well as Manos, who fights dirty, aiming for the eyes, being quite graphic for its time.THE TEMPTRESS, an important project that helped advanced the screen career of Greta Garbo, at long last, premiered January 24, 2005, on Turner Classic Movies cable channel, accompanied by a new score composed by Michael Picton. Scoring a silent movie is challenging, as mentioned in the half hour special that preceded the movie, and minutes into watching THE TEMPTRESS, the result of Picton's work is satisfactory and rewarding. In spite the fact that host Bob Osborne announced THE TEMPTRESS as making its world television premiere, it actually did play on television, but many years ago. THE TEMPTRESS was one of the selected 13 silent films shown weekly on the public television series in commemoration of MGM's fifty years titled "Movies-Great-Movies," (WNET, Channel 13, in New York City from August to October of 1973) hosted by Richard Schickel, movies accompanied by an an orchestral score (and in the New Jersey area as part of the 1974 series, "Films of the Gatsby Era," with same movies, different hosts, on WNJM, Channel 50). THE TEMPTRESS, which premiered in New York City August 13, 1973, made its final TV run on WNET in May of 1978 as part of the double bill five week movie tribute to Garbo and Katharine Hepburn. Schickel, as did Osborne, talked about how Garbo's discoverer, Mauritz Stiller, started out as the film's director, but due to complications during production, was replaced by Fred Niblo. The information regarding THE TEMPTRESS remains the same, with the exception of its time length. When shown in the 1970s, the running time was about 114 minutes. TCM's print runs at 105. But regardless of its length, possibly due to projection speed, THE TEMPTRESS is a welcome addition to the TCM lineup, and well worth viewing again after many years or the first time ever. While THE TEMPTRESS belongs to Antonio Moreno, whose name is almost forgotten today, it owes its success to the temptress herself, Greta Garbo, which is the sole reason for its rediscovery. (***)