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

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

MissSimonetta As I have stated before and often in my reviews, I don't care whether or not a film adaptation is faithful to its source material; my only requirement is that it be good and stand on its own two feet. Love (1927) mostly does this; I haven't read Anna Karenina, though I am familiar with the basic outline of the plot. Love hits the high points of the story, though it does make the relationship between Anna and Vronsky more a case of two soul mates finding one another than what those two characters are in the novel.Garbo is luminescent as Anna. She was not only gorgeous, but she could communicate such depth and soul despite being featured in so many standard melodramas. Gilbert does good and is ardent as the romantic lead, but Garbo steals the show. As is usual with most 1920s MGM melodramas, the production is lavish and pretty. My biggest issue is that the story is incredibly rushed; everything moves so quickly and it feels like scenes were even lost or snipped. Nothing develops gradually. Aside from that problem, Love is a nice romantic drama, though if you want your Garbo-Gilbert fix, you're better off with Flesh and the Devil or A Woman of Affairs.

mukava991 LOVE is the perfect title for this hacked-down adaptation of Tolstoy's mammoth novel ANNA KARENINA. It was made to cash in on the popularity of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, fresh from their box office triumph in FLESH AND THE DEVIL earlier the same year. Like virtually all of Garbo's silent films, much of the screen time is devoted to watching the great tormented Swede abandon herself to love, suffer for love, contemplate love, lose love, die. It is interesting to compare this version of the novel with the one made eight years later in which Garbo played opposite Fredric March who, while less dashing and handsome than Gilbert, did give a fine performance as the impetuous and essentially cruel Count Vronsky. In the latter film Garbo is less attractive due to the clash between the curly coiffure she is given and the strong planes and features of her face. She even looks like a male in drag in some scenes. But in LOVE she is beautiful and feminine throughout. The clinging 1920's-style dresses help, even if they detract from the authenticity of a story that is supposed to be set in 1870's Russia. Gilbert was one of the best actors of his era and the talent shows here. He is also a magnetic screen presence and one can understand why audiences in 1927 flocked to see these two together. The scenes of mother-son tenderness between Garbo and Philippe deLacy do indeed seem incestuous as others have pointed out, but so do the scenes between Garbo and Freddie Bartholomew in the 1935 version. I think it was just Garbo's way of expressing love on screen; you see her perform the same kind of nuzzling in other movies, whether the attentions are being given to a man, a woman or a child. I disliked both endings, but at least Garbo was ravishing in the happy one. And remember, Garbo was just shy of 22 when she filmed this, yet she is believable as an older woman. She had a face that could express any age. This movie cries out for a re-scoring. The print shown on TCM is marred by what sounds like muffled applause from time to time.

Romano Love is a better than you expect silent film romance.There are a few remarkable qualities a film lover will encounter in Love. Foremost is how little the emotional impact of Love has faded over the years (relative to other silent films). Often silent films are enjoyable because they have aged and we can delight in their quaint or old-fashioned sensibility, laughing while comparing how much movies and pop culture have changed. Love, however, has largely maintained its original affect, which is particularly amazing given it is a sentimental tear-jerker romance, a genre that ages, perhaps, lest well. These eighty years later we still can related to the feelings of both Captain Count Alexei Vronsky (John Gilbert) and Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo) while we root for their love. Of course there are plenty of moments, originally dramatic, that are now laughable, but over all the film has age well. (Most odd is the depiction of Anna and her son's love. Today it plays with disturbingly incestuous overtones. I do not know how it played in 1927.)The second striking feature, also related to how well this film has aged, is how beautiful Greta Garbo appears. Like many elements in silent films, standards are beauty may not translate across generations. Actors and actresses considered amazingly beautiful in the teens and twenties may no longer satisfy the modern movie star equivalent. Garbo, however, is still strikingly, obviously beautiful. The final striking feature is a bit of trivia – there are two endings to Love, an American ending and a European. The difference in endings is striking in that the same divergent choices would probably be made today. The European ending is bleak, tragic and emotionally effective, as Anna steps in front of the rushing train rather than live without her lover and son. Further, it is the ending in the original text, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The American ending is predictable, saccharine and laughable. Americans in 1927, like American today, want their romances to end with all the loose ends tided up, all the obstacles overcome, and all our couples marring to live happily ever after.Story Synopsis: Love is based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina meets Captain Count Alexei Vronsky in a terrible blizzard late one afternoon and he helps her to shelter. He is instantly smitten, but she rejects him. Vronsky helps Anna back to the Czarist court and her husband, Senator Alexei Karenina. Vronsky too is part of the court, the top assistant to the Grand Duke. Vronsky and Anna continue to meet at various events: official functions, dances, wolf hunts. Eventually they fall hopelessly in love. The court is abuzz as it is obvious to all who see Vronsky and Anna that they are attracted to each other. Karenina cold and authoritarian, warns Anna of court gossip and commands she at least be inconspicuous and avoid public scandal. Anna and Vronsky try a number of times to stop seeing each but their love is overpowering. Eventually they abscond to Italy, rejecting their former lives to live as lovers. Anna, however, cannot bare being away from her son. When she returns Karenina refuses to allow Anna to visit her son again. Further, Anna finds out that Vronsky is going to be dismissed from his military post because of their affair. Realizing how awful that would be for Vronsky she makes a deal with his commander: if she leaves St. Petersburg forever Vronsky will retain his post. She decides to leave on the next train, sacrificing her happiness for Vronsky's. But Anna cannot bear the thought of leaving both her lover and her adored son. Instead of riding her train into exile she steps in front of it to her death. The ending is sudden, shocking, and effective. A surprisingly poignant ending to a film of pleasant surprises. American Ending: Years later Vronsky happens upon Anna and her son. Vronsky has maintained his high military post, Anna's husband is dead, mother and son are together, Anna and Vronsky still love each and will surely soon marry now that they have re-found each other. And we have "happily ever after'.

SilntFan I've always been an ardent fan of Flesh and the Devil, but then I saw Love. This movie is absolutely beautiful, there's no other word to describe it. Whereas Flesh and the Devil seemed to be crass commercialism, Love is more subtle in many ways.I gave this movie a 9 due to two rather melodramatic moments where Garbo wasn't exactly restraining herself. However, there are enough scenes where she conveys Anna's inner turmoil by the most fleeting and eloquent of expressions. The lighting in her scenes are breathtakingly beautiful, and I can only imagine how long it took to set it up just right! In so many of her scenes she is heartbreaking, especially when, exiled from her home, she sees a schoolboy and momentarily believes that he is her son and tries to embrace him. When he struggles and runs away, she does a wonderful job portraying Anna's rather unstable mind, which she does to great effect throughout the picture. In the beginning, however, when she first meets Vronsky, she seems to be in control of herself, and there is a wonderfully imperious stare in close-up, followed quickly by a close-up of Gilbert. As I watched her, I was astonished when I remembered that she was only 22 in this film.Which brings us to Gilbert. For those who think of him as simply Valentino's successor as the Great Lover, being no more than a slab of meat for the delight of female audiences, need to watch this film. He is simply perfect, the model of natural acting -- there is not a hint of melodrama or the "ham" about him. He is completely in love with Anna, but there are none of the breast-heaving love scenes that are throughout Flesh and the Devil. He is jealous of anybody coming between him and Anna, but there are no widened eyes and arm waving. Simply jamming his hands in his pockets and an angry stare into the distance.My only complaint with this film was the presentation on TCM. They used a live performance, and we get the "audience reaction" throughout the film. Which is fine at points, but for the most part, the reaction is totally wrong. Too many times there was laughter at what was, in 1927, a very dramatic moment. When Jack is too busy looking at Garbo to blow out the match and ends up burning his finger, that's funny. But when Anna says the profound line to the jealous Vronsky "There is no more or less in love -- I love you both infinitely" (referring to her son), the laughter was totally inappropriate. I hope this is not the avenue of any future TCM silent movies. Even though modern audiences are supposedly more "sophisticated," they aren't sophisticated enough to appreciate what "worked" 70-75 years ago. Even though these movies are old, there are still images and "lines" that are as ageless as Garbo's face.