A Woman of Affairs

John Gilbert and Greta Garbo with Dorothy Sebastian in between

Clarence Brown's A Woman of Affairs is a luxe MGM production released in 1928. The film was the third teaming of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert as romantic leads. The project reteamed the leads with Brown after he had helmed them in 1926's Flesh and the Devil, a sizeable hit for MGM. A Woman of Affairs is silent with a synchronized musical score and sound effects. It was also a hit, but has tended to have a lesser reputation than the earlier film. A Woman of Affairs main drawback is its predictable script, a mélange of mush, madcap hijinks, and moralizing melodrama.

A team of writers had adapted the book from Michael Arlen's 1924 novel, The Green Hat. Arlen was the pen name of Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian, a Romanian born, Armenian bred writer whose family settled in England. Arlen is not much remembered today, but was he very well known in his lifetime and even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1927. The Green Hat is largely a dark satire of the smart set of 1920's London. The femme fatale of the book was based on Nancy Cunard, the heiress whose lovers ranged from Arlen to Ezra Pound and Aldous Huxley. The Green Hat was a huge best seller and even spawned a stage adaptation with Katharine Cornell and Leslie Howard that ran for 251 performances on Broadway. Unfortunately, what we are left with in A Woman of Affairs is a bowdlerized facsimile of Arlen's novel. The homosexuality, heroin, and venereal disease of the book were a no go for MGM even in the Pre-Code era.

The film spans the course of ten years. We first meet Garbo's character racing through the English countryside in her auto, blithely disregarding the speed limit and the safety of construction workers. By her side is her beloved (Gilbert) since childhood. The twosome are all set to get hitched when Gilbert's father (the suitably moribund Hobart Bosworth) maneuvers a separation for them. Gilbert is sent off to find his fortune in Egypt while Garbo succumbs to the attention of earnest, stolid John Mack Brown. Garbo's character, at this point, is a little too young for her and displays unusual gayety long before Ninotchka and Two-Faced Woman. 

However, all that changes on Garbo and John Mack Brown's wedding night. Just before they can taste the delights of paradise, the law bursts through the door ready to bust Brown for embezzlement. Seeking death before dishonor, he leaps to his death through an open window. This is a bravura sequence somewhat muffed by a stiff and amateurish Brown. As Brown hears a knocking at the door after a preliminary nuzzle with Garbo, the director gives us a moving close-up of wedding rice slipping through his hands. The camera dollies back as Brown leaves the bedroom to his doom. It is unfortunate that John Mack Brown, a former Crimson Tide gridiron star, looks like he's ready to throw up a stiff arm, but director Clarence Brown did what he could. Brown, would soon lose his MGM contract, but eventually morphed into B Western star Johnny Mack Brown.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Garbo

Garbo's character doesn't want to besmirch her husband's character, so she lets Gilbert and her alcoholic brother (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) believe that it was her perfidy that drove her husband to his end. This is pretty nonsensical so the picture paves over the next seven years with snapshots of her various continental lovers. Fairbanks death reunites her with Gilbert, but he is now engaged to the fetching Constance played by Dorothy Sebastian. I was surprised by how effective Fairbanks is in a real Mr. Hyde performance. I do think he was more suited to light and charming roles, but he gives the film some drunken energy, particularly when he is bouncing around Cedric Gibbons fine Henley Royal Regatta set. Gilbert has little to do, this is all Garbo's picture, but sit around and stew with queasy lovesickness.

Dorothy Sebastian is stuck in a one note role. Constance is constant love, get it, but Sebastian gives the role some forlorn warmth. I wish she had given us more screen performances in the sound era, but her career declined after MGM released her in 1930. This may have more to do with her off-screen behavior than her acting chops. She had been a New York chorus girl before, according to Louise Brooks, a tryst with Lord Beaverbrook led to an MGM contract. She continued to be uninhibited in her private life with liaisons with married men including Buster Keaton and William Boyd, eventually her second husband. She was also known for knocking them back. Her propensity to pass out at parties earned her the moniker Slam Bang Sebastian. Regardless, I adore her and the moxie she gives even a doormat role like Constance.

That I find A Women of Affairs enjoyable despite a silly script is primarily due to Garbo and Clarence Brown. Brown was Garbo's favorite director and they developed a simpatico relationship over seven films. Garbo is at her most relaxed here, even when she has to play noble. Brown always tries to milk what he can from the material no matter how ridiculous. He uses a lot of dollies in and out to punch up the melodrama. particularly effective is a dolly back revealing the emptiness of Garbo's room after her husband's suicide. The police inquiry and its hubbub are over and the shot impresses upon us that Garbo's character is alone and abandoned by society. I also enjoyed Brown's close-ups of hands, not only John Mack Brown's rice slipping through his fingers, but also a ring slipping off Garbo's finger to signal sexual surrender. A Woman of Affairs doesn't add up to a hill of beans, but it has moments.