Watch Love For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I just wanted to say that I really appreciated your review of "Love". I had no idea that Greta Garbo made two versions of Anna Karenina and it sounds like the first might be even better than the second. I haven't seen it yet but now I will surely keep an eye open for it on TCM. I liked how you touched on the fact that silent movies really emphasize actual acting and not just people talking. The fact that Garbo and Gilbert were in love in real life must make the film only that more passionate. I really just wanted to review your review. I don't know if that is the purpose of the form I am filling out. It is obvious that you are a real lover of films and it is always nice to know there is another one out there. You did a great and thorough job explaining why you enjoyed "Love".

Anyone who thinks silent movies can't convey the realistic passion of love should see this pairing of Garbo and John Gilbert.Their chemistry is palpable and the loss Garbo suffers in terms of her son is believable without plunging into bathos.I was fortunate to see a version of this film on TCM that provided both endings -- the puerile have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too version for American audiences and the bleak, moralistic one that that was distributed for more adult viewers internationally.It's shocking that Americans were believed to require such pabulum. But when you think about it we remain a childish, head-in-the-sand society in many ways. It's just rare to have the us-vs.-them contrast shoved in one's face like this...The performances in this film are stellar. I'm ashamed to say -- and American enough to admit -- that I haven't read "Anna Karenina." Now at least I wish to.I love when movies help to bring my own life into clearer focus. And this one has. Vronsky: "To see you and not touch you...to love you and not have you...No, we'll never see each other again..." This film brings out a terrible truth in life, as acted out by the cold and passionless Karenin. "You two will destroy each other." He needn't have dirtied his hands or mussed his hair and he knew it. Powerful!

(Possible SPOILERS) I'm glad to see this forgotten film receiving praise here from fans; I echo Silntfan's sentiments about Gilbert--this is the movie that made me suddenly realize he was a good actor. He didn't seem like the same actor from "Flesh and the Devil" and "A Woman of Affairs." My favorite silent Garbo film is still the light, stylish "The Kiss," but "Love" impressed me greatly.By the way, various sources (Maltin's book, the TCM host) claim this 1927 version is "modern". Yet it's set in Czarist Russia, which is not modern for 1927! In fact, nothing in the film indicates it's not a 19th Century setting--they don't drive cars, they don't go to movies, they don't have telephones, etc. You might argue that Garbo's fashions are modern, but that just means they're anachronistic for the Czarist era, not that the whole setting is modern. What's really modern is the ending, and that's what I want to praise.It came as a breathtaking shock to me, since I had no prior knowledge of it. The TCM print ends with a happy resolution. Then we see a notice that this was the American ending, and next comes the tragic ending shown in Europe. This film's tragic ending of Anna K (well-known) is abrupt and unconvincing (unlike every other scene in this film, so well-directed by Edmund Goulding).At the risk of being a literary heretic, I must say the happy ending is better! I know we're supposed to sneer at Hollywood's desecration of great literature, and we're supposed to be swept up in the romantic tragedy of sacrifice, how noble or self-pitying it is. But frankly, the classic ending is a revolt against reason. In fact, it's a conventional moralistic punishment for a supposedly strong heroine. The happy ending, in which people actually behave with sense, is subversive because Anna gets to have her adulterous beefcake and eat it too. Call it a crass commercial decision if you will, but it's exactly what Tolstoy couldn't have published in the 19th Century, and what Hollywood couldn't have done after the Production Code crackdown in 1934--which is probably as much why the 1935 remake is tragic as any special allegiance to Tolstoy. The high 20s was the right window to tell the story sensibly.

Slow-moving, silent version of Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina, stars Garbo as a married socialite who has an affair with soldier Gilbert. This followed shortly after the duo made Flesh and the Devil, but it is not a worthy follow-up. There are two endings-one happy and one sad. Remade by Garbo in 1935. Only merits 2 stars in my book.