Popular reviews

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  Review by Gentry ★★★

  “I don’t blame her! Half of us women would shoot our husbands—if we only had the nerve!”

  Garbo shoots! Oh, poor Pierre! What 18-year-old wouldn’t fall stupidly in love with married Garbo if they were so lucky to be orbiting her social circle. For his trouble, the young lad (played by a debuting, fresh-faced Lew Ayres) gets beaten within an inch of his life for forcing a long kiss on the not entirely unreceptive Irene (Garbo). The Kiss would be the last silent for both Garbo and Conrad Nagel (who plays the third man, and true love interest in this doomed quadrangle love affair). MGM couldn’t drag their feet any longer and had to make the transition to talking pictures.…

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  Review by Quiller ★★★★

  Greta Garbo’s final silent film is rarely regarded as one of her best, but I’ve always liked it. A lot of the credit surely goes to Garbo herself. She may well have been the subtlest star of the silent era — she communicates more with a shrug or a half-smile than most other actors can with wild gesticulations or, once talkies came around, with reams of dialogue. However, I’ll put in a word for director Jacques Feyder, who coaxes subtle performances from the rest of the cast, too, and comes up with startlingly cinematic ideas of his own. It’s a shame that Garbo didn’t have the same rapport with Feyder she had with Clarence Brown. Although Feyder directed the German-language…

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  Review by 𝑨𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒂 ★★★★½

  Greta Garbo's acting is art in its purest form.

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  Review by Robert Hayes ★★★½

  Producer: How much would you like to use Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture?
  William Axt: Yes.

  MGM and Greta Garbo's last silent film. The scandalous aspect of an older woman taking up with a younger man wasn't as much of a focus as I thought it would be. And to be fair, I'm ok with that. Garbo and Lew Ayres didn't look too far apart in age anyway. Where this really stood out was in the cinematography, costumes, and production design, enlivening what was an otherwise fairly routine melodramatic potboiler.

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  Review by phoebe 💫 ★★½ 2

  I know the description says a “chaste” kiss but I really went into this hoping to see Greta make out with 21 year old Lew Ayres, peak of male beauty, but instead I had to watch her be tormented by two dusty men who I cared nothing about! Feeling dejected

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★½ 1

  'You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss..'

  Brief Synopsis: Unhappily married woman (Greta Garbo) finds herself in the dock accused of the murder of her husband (Anders Randolf) when an innocent goodbye kiss given to an infatuated family friend (a debuting Lew Ayres, looking remarkably like a young John Wayne!) leads to misunderstanding and all sorts of courtroom melodrama when - of course! - she is defended by her secret lover (Conrad Nagel).

  Verdict: Completed in September 1929, Garbo's last Silent film - and the last Silent film produced by MGM - is utter nonsense, of course, but the hackneyed material is transformed by the Swedish Sphinx's own special brand of movie magic and Belgian-born Jacques Feyder's…

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  Review by Lowbacca ★★★★

  It's not too often that a single part of a movie can really sell me on a movie, but The Kiss certainly did. Overall, this is a bit of a mystery component, with Greta Garbo as a wife in a fairly disinterested marriage and in love with another man while also drawing the attention of a teenager. With one of the most literal Chekhov's Guns ever, this ends with her husband dead and her on trial and trying to not tell investigators anything. That alone makes for a decent story, and there was a good sense of mystery towards the end (the sort that would disappear after the production code would kick in and moral grays were removed).

  What I…

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  Review by JJ ★★★½

  Silent Garbo was elite

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  Review by idgey ★★★½

  They sure packed a lot into that hour! Affair, misunderstanding, murder, and more! And at one point there was this full frame shot of Garbo's face and I think the sole purpose of it is so you can see how absolutely stunning she was and the cinematographer was like "Oh yeah. Take it all in. Take your time. No rush."

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  Review by Quinn

  Queer Film Challenge 2018

  Week 16: A film starring an actress from classic Hollywood who was / may have been closeted

  Jacques Feyder’s The Kiss is both Greta Garbo‘s and MGM’s goodbye to the silent era, a rather short melodrama about jilted lovers and murderous intrigue - heavy on florid title cards and Tchaikovsky’s theme from Romeo and Juliet. My TCM rip (for private home viewing purposes only, I promise) has Robert Osborne’s intro, in which we learn that Garbo was pleased to work with the very European Feyder; instead of yelling “cut!” after shooting a scene, Feyder would take a handkerchief and daintly flutter it in front of the camera. If I ever directed films, I’d do that too.…

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  Review by Emily ★★★½

  The Kiss was Greta Garbo's last silent picture. Gosh she was just stunning. This was Lew Ayres film debut and he was so young and handsome. Their scenes together were cute.

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  Review by Jacob Juenger ★★★½

  1929's The Kiss represents the last silent film (sort of) for both MGM in general and Greta Garbo in particular, largely out of concern about how the Swedish star would translate into the talking era. On the surface, it would seem like a foolish strategy to release a movie without recorded dialogue while audiences were ignoring such movies in droves and attending any old crap with voices, doubly so given that this was released just a few months after the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. Yet it wound up becoming a hit in spite of all of this. How did this happen?

  Well, it wasn't aided by the average melodrama, which involves Garbo's Irene in a…