User reviews

In Lyons, Irene Guarry (Greta Garbo) is not happy with her marriage with the old businessman Charles Guarry (Anders Randolf) and is in love with the young lawyer André Duball (Conrad Nagel). Irene knows that the jealous Charles will never give the divorce to her; therefore they decide to stop seeing each other since she does not want to be an unfaithful wife and defy the convention. André also decides to move to Paris. One day, Irene knows the eighteen year-old college student Pierre Lassalle (Lew Ayres) in a party during his vacation and she learns that the youngster is infatuated with her. By the end of his vacation, Pierre asks a photo for Irene and she promises to give one to him. Meanwhile Charles has a meeting with Pierre's father Lassalle (Holmes Herbert) and discloses that he is on the verge of bankruptcy. Lassalle promises to help his friend and they schedule a meeting in the night. When Charles goes to the encounter, Pierre arrives at his home and asks for a goodbye kiss to Irene. Meanwhile Charles does not feel well and returns home, witnessing their kiss. Charles tries to kill Pierre and later the student arrives home and tells his father that Charles is dead. Irene is arrested accused of murdering her husband. What happened in Charles's office?

"The Kiss" is a melodramatic romance and the last MGM and Greta Garbo's silent film and the debut of Lew Ayres. The movie has beautiful shots, a mystery and Greta Garbor extremely beautiful. Despite being a silent film, MGM uses sound technology with a powerful orchestral soundtrack. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Beijo" ("The Kiss")

The Kiss (1929) was the final silent film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was also the final silent film of stars Greta Garbo and Conrad Nagel.

The subtle acting and sophisticated (and purely visual) storytelling show how far silent cinema had come by the late 1920s. When talkies took over Hollywood, the acting regressed back to that of the stage, the background music was replaced with static hiss, and even basic film-making techniques were restrained due to the sound equipment. It would take a few years for sound technology to grow in sophistication.

Removed from its distinction as the end of an era, The Kiss is an average melodrama, especially for Garbo, who plays an unhappily married woman in love with another man. She looks luminous and acts completely with her eyes, her brilliance showing through even in material such as this. Conrad Nagel is competent in an unchallenging role, and Lew Ayres is simultaneously adorable and somewhat sinister as the young man smitten with Garbo.

The big twist is predictable and the recorded score is cheesy, using Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet theme as the lovers' leitmotif, but overall, this is a skillfully made bit of melodramatic fluff, the last gasp of MGM's silent output.

"The Kiss" has a fairly predictable plot, but interesting acting from the excellent cast keeps you watching on this one. As others wrote, the Vitaphone soundtrack here was pretty poor, except for one section; all the melodies have been used before in many silent films. Listening to classical Tchaikovsky is not really appropriate for a modern film like "The Kiss."

Greta has some great closeups in this film, but in certain sections seems to be sleepwalking through her role. Conrad Nagel was a delight to watch, he always seemed much more handsome on screen than in his still photos. He is the hero in this film, if the film could really be said to have a hero after everyone lies in court.

Lew Ayres was adorable, and had to have made a great impression on studio bosses when the film was first released, for he went straight from this film into his classic "All Quiet On The Western Front", which made him a star. Holmes Herbert, so good in Pola Negri's "A Woman of the World", here is aged with makeup and plays Lew Ayres' father convincingly. Anders Randolf was a bit jarring as Greta's husband, but his performance was fine too.

The print was decent on this MGM release, compared to another Garbo feature, "The Single Standard", made earlier. But of both films, "The Single Standard" is by far the superior film technically, plot-wise, and in its performances, though its print is more worn.

In star Greta Garbo's silent films especially, I think the stories are secondary to the images. They tend to be similarly melodramatic romances about adultery and love triangles and the surrounding scandals and tragedies. This one is more of a love rectangle, with Garbo's husband and the characters played by Conrad Nagel and Lew Ayres all trying to possess her. It's a generic formula, especially for the vehicles of MGM's star Garbo. Yes, there's a mystery element, but that's none too appealing, either. There's even dinner-party and courtroom scenes, and, of course, her husband is an old rotund businessman. The title cards are gushy, and the musical score, including the love theme from Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet," is unoriginal. Yet, the narrative does focus in some interesting and different ways on Garbo's image, and this is yet another lovely-looking late silent film, as Garbo's 1920s MGM productions tend to be. It's fortunate that Garbo, with her foreign accent, was the last of the studio's stars to transition to talkies--this being the last silent film of both Garbo and MGM--because they're some of the most deliberately gorgeous pictures of the era. They're far superior to the awkward early talkies concurrently being made by others.

Appropriately, "The Kiss" begins with Garbo and one of her lovers in a French art gallery; from there, the film itself is a piece of visual art. Much of that is the glossy close-ups of Garbo's face, but there's an emphasis on shots of her walking and riding away from men in this one, too. There are several overhead establishing shots, superimposed images and dolly-shot transitions. The best moving camera shot is in the assault scene, with the camera pulling back after the door closes. The gunshot and phone ringing are also a better use of sound effects than in most contemporary talkies. There are two flashback scenes of this incident as narrated, or imagined, by Garbo--one is a lie and the other, presumably, is the truth. Both are filmed differently and from different angles than the first instance. The Art Deco sets are impressive, too--mainly for Garbo's home. The abstract skyscrapers design on her bedroom wall is a standout. Additionally, there's the motif of Garbo's image: Ayres wants a photograph of her, the newspapers print her image, the courtroom artists draw it, while the overall film and machinery of MGM's star making focuses on creating it. In this case, that machinery is partly of European imported artists, including Garbo herself, the director and the writer. The transition to talkies would surrender much of such foreign talent, although, fortunately, not Garbo.

With about an hour runtime, this is a relatively-brief feature and taut. For instance, when the husband has his wife tailed, it's to establish his jealous suspicions, which are sure to foreshadow later events. And when we're shown "Chekhov's gun," expect it to be fired by the end.

This isn't the best Garbo silent ever made, but it was the last, and it was also the final silent film made by MGM. What makes this film good is the combination of Garbo's acting and the cinematography here. Movies like this and Sunrise make me somewhat sad that the silent film era ended, because what could be done creatively with the camera was lost from this point until the early 30's once the problems of the static camera got worked out and the novelty of sound at the expense of everything else wore off.

Garbo convincingly plays the sympathetic yet no-longer-in-love wife when in the presence of her husband (Anders Randolf), the longing lover who wishes to defy convention and just leave her marriage behind regardless of the consequences when with André Dubail (Conrad Nagel), and the knowledgeable "older" woman who is enjoying the attention she is getting when with the very young and naive Pierre Lassalle (Lew Ayres). Whenever she is alone she has no trouble conveying which of these three moods she is in. The story is a very good tale of tortured romance with a little bit of mystery thrown in towards the end, but the main attractions are the romance and the beautiful and creative shots. The only thing really annoying is the original Vitaphone score that went along with the movie. With all of the other subtle expression going on in this film, the choice of the theme song from "Romeo and Juliet" to convey the feelings between Garbo and Nagel every time they shared a scene just seemed a bit over the top.

As a fan of Greta Garbo films, I consider each one of them highly entertaining and worth seeking out. The Swedish beauty could captivate the viewer in many of her roles to such extend that she was as popular in movie world as, much later, the Swedish band ABBA was in music world. Yet, when I talk to people who are quite knowledgeable about the early cinema, I usually encounter the opinion that Garbo films let them down. "She was such a dramatic lady," they say "she can still make us cry."

Strange as it may occur, to some extend, this pretentious opinion may be found accurate, particularly when we consider the year 1939 and Garbo's first comedy NINOTCHKA made by Ernst Lubitsch. What a change, what a revelation it was! "A true transformation," some said and indeed, NINOTCHKA proved Garbo's talent in comedy (unfortunately forever bound to fail two years later in TWO FACED WOMAN). But few people know that Garbo had wonderfully modern roles in some other films, roles that can still make your day thanks to their charm and convincing portrayals. One of such films is THE KISS with original musical score, the last silent movie of Garbo and MGM directed by Jacques Feyder with whom Garbo worked later on the German version of "Anna Christie" with Salka Viertel. The uniqueness of THE KISS is the fact that it is very different from all other Garbo films.

The kiss of 'good bye' that cost Irene Guarry (Greta Garbo) so much (which was metaphorically Garbo's farewell to silents) is the representation of all human struggles and desires. Simple as the short story may seem, when you watch the film carefully, you realize that the director aimed at conveying some important and a very up-to-date message for all of us: "Listen to your heart not the tyrants of conventions and misery of duties..." There is a bit of everything in the story: wit, romance, jealousy, pardoning... Consider, for instance, the sequence at the court where we get the masterwork of human situation, individual situation in the mute world.

The film can boast terrific artistic merits with scenes of exceptional charm. Here, a mention must be made of the party at Lasalle, which again proves the glamor of the silent era. But, most things we can appreciate here are there thanks to the Swedish Sphinx... Garbo. The great Greta gives another brilliant performance in the lead but, as it has already been mentioned, her role differs from other of her silent roles in the way that Irene Guarry appears to be a particularly modern character as well as her story appears to be extremely appealing to modern audience. It is not as much her vehicle as the story which captivates certain viewers. That, however, does not mean that we easily forget the great actress whose presence illumines the moments and supplies them with unique power. There are exceptional shots of Garbo's face. Consider, for instance, the moment she looks at herself in the mirror. Perhaps not as great as the ultra famous moment in FLESH AND THE DEVIL but also highly worth attention. What a great beauty she was!

So to speak, THE KISS is a very important movie in both Garbo's career and the history of MGM. It occurs to be a great farewell to the silent era, an interesting look at life situation filled with the affection that any kiss deserves... And for Garbo fans somewhere there in the world: a different look at the famous Swede, yet, unique and magnetic as always.

Greta Garbo's last silent film finds her unhappily married to Andres Randalf, tearfully fending off the advances of old boyfriend Conrad Nagel and letting young and callow Lew Ayres steal A Kiss from her. Ayres is the son of Holmes Herbert who is her husband's business partner complicating things even more.

You can't blame Ayres though. In that last silent film Garbo is certainly at her most alluring and she carries the film off beautifully.

Ayres is thinking with his male member and he's at an age where there is more tendency to do that. When Randalf catches him with Garbo he starts beating on the kid as any jealous husband would. He gets shot for his troubles and Garbo is arrested. She also shields young Ayres telling him to leave the premises.

This is where Nagel comes in. Even without dialog as per usual in a courtroom scene he does well in putting over the dramatic impact of the trial. All actors love courtroom drama and Nagel gets some good innings in here.

I have to say though, French forensics leave a lot to be desired if they are manipulated in the way they are.

In the hands of a lesser actress The Kiss would have been melodramatic claptrap. But Garbo can make anything look positively poetical.

I've got to admit up front that I have long felt that Greta Garbo was a bit overrated as an actress. All too often, she was stuck in super-melodramatic films involving either adultery or with Garbo playing an irresistible "super-vamp". While the public loved this persona, the films seemed quite derivative and clichéd. There are only so many films like this you can watch until they blend together.

Fortunately, she also made some dandy films like NINOTCHKA, QUEEN Christina and THE KISS. While superficially the film seems just like another adultery film, Garbo was given better material--as she was a woman who WANTED to commit adultery but couldn't bring herself to cheat on her much older husband. I'm glad the film didn't pursue this expected plot line but instead the film is about the consequences when the husband THINKS she's cheating on him when she isn't. This led to a dandy finale where there is a nice plot twist.

Overall, this film excelled because Garbo did NOT stare in a pained way into space as she so often did in films where she played a married woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Here, she plays a more believable and well-rounded personality--someone who seemed much more human than the usual Garbo character.

With good production values and only one minor problem (a repetitive and sappy soundtrack), this is well worth a look.

"The Kiss" happens about midway into the movie ... Greta Garbo gives young admirer Lew Ayres a friendly kiss goodbye as he's about to leave town, Ayres, who cannot control his infatuation with the beautiful Garbo, goes in for another, less platonic kiss, at which point Garbo's husband sees them from afar and goes berserk. A fight amongst the three ensues, gets carried into another room where the door is shut to us, the audience, and we hear a shot. Garbo's husband is dead, but who did it?

Prior to the "kiss" moment, we've seen Garbo and her lover (Conrad Nagel) in a torturous romance ... they both love each other madly but Greta doesn't see any way out of her loveless marriage. In the meantime, Lew Ayres follows Greta around like a puppy dog; he's an 18-year-old completely infatuated with the beautiful married lady.

The latter half of the movie deals with the investigation of the husband's death, Greta's arrest, and her trial where she is defended by Nagel who in addition to being her former lover is also a lawyer.

I won't give away the outcome of the trial, but I will say that the jury believes it is Person A who did it and after the trial we learn it was Person B.

The musical score to this flick was absolutely horrible. I especially could have done without the "Romeo and Juliet" theme that was played every time the flick wanted to telegraph Greta's and Conrad's love to the audience.

Despite the score, this was a very enjoyable silent movie. I find some silents tedious, others quite well done. "The Kiss" definitely falls into the latter category. Worth watching.

MGM knew it had a treasure in its employ in actress Greta Garbo. The studio had witnessed many a silent movie stars' shine quickly fade when their voices were heard on the screen. With the Swedish actress, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took care not to have that happen. Hiring a tutor in English, the studio had Garbo learn and constantly practice her English when she wasn't on the set making her latest movie.

While every Hollywood studio stopped producing silent movies by the end of 1929, MGM was the last holdout, although the silents they released were mostly Garbo vehicles. Since talkies were introduced in late 1927, Garbo had made seven silents, the most of any prominent actor or actress in Hollywood after the "Jazz Singer's" release. In 1929, she made three silent films alone. Studio executives determined her December 1929 "The Kiss" was to be her last. It was also MGM's last silent.

Adapted from a George Saville short story, "The Kiss" involves an innocent peck between Irene (Garbo) and a late-teenage friend of the family, Pierre (actor Lew Ayres in his movie debut). Her husband, Charles (Anders Randolf) is suspicious his younger wife is having an affair-she is, but not with Pierre. When he sees the two embrace, Charles proceeds to beat up on the poor kid. Irene grabs her husband's gun in his desk drawer. The door closes on the three as the sound of the gun is heard ("The Kiss" did have a musical soundtrack and an occasional sound effect.).

When "The Kiss" was released, the studio was expecting a dismal showing at the gate. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was in its third month and recent silent movies were pulled pretty quickly from those theaters wired for sound. But because of Garbo's star power, the film did reasonably well, taking in almost $1 million at the box office and making MGM almost half a mil in profits. It was another of the actress' financially successful films, second only behind the John Gilbert-starred 1927 "Flesh and The Devil."

Variety was effusive in its praise, writing, "Though this is silent it may be stronger that way than with dialog. Few actresses could weather the series of close-ups required of Miss Garbo in this one. In each she registers an individual perfection." The American Film Institute equally felt highly of its quality, with its members nominating it as one of 400 movies to consider for its Top 100 Greatest Love Stories in Film.

Irene Guarry (Greta Garbo) is unhappily married to an old businessman. She decides to end her affair before it's discovered by her jealous husband. She has a more innocent relationship with the much younger Pierre Lassalle who is in puppy love for her. There is an inopportune moment.

This is the last major silent film from MGM depending on the definition. There is synchronized music but no dialogue. Most importantly, it has Garbo. She literally glows in black and white. Trying to do this in bad sound would have probably been a mistake. This is silent film done well in an era of changing technology.

"The kiss" took the melodramatic accents of Feyder 's precedent work " Les Nouveaux Messieurs"and tightened them up;whereas that work should have been boiled down to a 90 min movie, "the kiss" depicts a tragedy in admirably succinct style :only 62 min,a very good screenplay which does not reveal the whole truth before the last minutes.It's the classic story of the divine lady married with a graybeard without love ,in love with a more handsome gent;add a young man,pretending to be a man (the subject of the immature young lad will come back later in Feyder 's career in " Pension Mimosas")and all the ingredients of a good melodrama are in it.

In Hollywood,Feyder accurately depicted his native land:in jails for women ,the wardens were nuns (in 1960 ,in Clouzot's "La Vérité" ,Brigitte Bardot was guarded by sisters too);and the gendarmes' uniforms are exactly as they were.

After this successful work (which owed a lot to G.Garbo in her last silent movie) ,Feyder was disappointed with the screenplays left for him to direct and he came back to his native land and produced his greatest achievements :"Le Grand Jeu" ,"Pension Mimosas" and his masterpiece "La Kermesse Héroique".

The Kiss (1929) : Brief Review -

The Kiss is a 'Big Miss' in the climax, nevertheless, Greta Garbo's final phenomena in Silent Version is unmissable for many other reasons. I wanted to call it cliches but couldn't, because it was 1929 when everything was like a sort of new stuff. That shield has saved a lot of stabbing and it's reasonable too. I can't even call it a bad film just because the climax didn't work for me. The rest of the film was really good and engaging. It was short and sweet. Unfortunately, not much intelligent. It's soapy and corny but that's still fine for a 1929's film. I agree. No objections. Let's move on. The Kiss is about an unhappily married woman who has a lover but both don't agree on getting along together. Then she gets involved in scandal and murder when her motherly affection toward a young man is misinterpreted. The film has quite a suspenseful climax with one big surprise, which i wasn't really expecting from such a romantic-flavoured film, so it did surprise me. However, the surprise didn't end up with that intelligent thought, so it all looked bit implausible. But be assured, it wasn't that predictable as you would think. Greta Garbo shines like an immovable star who is stuck at centre only to shine and overshadow everybody in the film. Her looks, glam appeal, expressions, that positive and negative chemistry everything is top notch. I would like to watch this film again only to see The Great Garbo - Greta Garbo. Conrad Nagel, her lover and a lawyer, is good in his role which comes with scattered paperwork but his honest performance gathers those pieces together. I don't know what Jacques Feyder had in his mind, or maybe it was me who was expecting Clarence Brown kind of stuff (because it was Garbo's film), but what he did wasn't completely satisfying. Nonetheless, it's a good drama, but it's just that my personal expectations were too different and too high,. Especially from the final silent film of these people.

RATING - 6.5/10*

By the time "The Kiss" was made, Garbo was an established >superstar, and her films were specially tailored vehicles to >enhance this stardom. Yet, surprisingly, French director Jacques >Feyder subordinates Garbo to a rather pedestrian murder mystery. >Even worse, he cuts away from "the kiss" (between Garbo & Lew >Ayers) referenced in the title. M-G-M might have been too >worried over Garbo's imminent entrance into talkies to care. >The film is notable for its fantastic Art Deco sets, but also >suffers from one of the worst contemporary Movietone scores of >any late silent feature. A mixed bag.

Those of you who think silent movies are boring and that the complete element of storytelling is lost without dialogue have obviously never seen The Kiss. It was both the end and beginning of an era for this 1929 drama; Greta Garbo switched to talkies afterwards, and Hollywood was prepped for a brand new star Lew Ayres. Lew had been an extra in two previous films, so for an intents and purposes this was his introduction to audiences. His very next movie would be All Quiet on the Western Front, and the rest is history.

I love titles that have double or even triple meanings, and when you watch The Kiss, you won't be sure which is the titular kiss until it really and truly happens. Greta stars as a beautiful woman trapped in a loveless marriage to the brutish Anders Randolf. She falls in love with Conrad Nagel, but she breaks it off to spare him her husband's violent temper. As their lives diverge and carry on, Greta tries to make the best of things by enjoying her friends and her lifestyle. Among her friends is Holmes Herbert, whose young son Lew Ayres is home during a break from college.

Lew is such a doll in this movie, and he's so young! He was only 21 years old: quite the lucky break for the young man to act opposite the silent icon Greta Garbo. The story of this movie passes at a quick pace and will keep surprising you at every turn. Mark my words, you'll get so consumed in it, you'll forget the actors aren't talking. This is a great one to start with if you're new to either silent movies in general or one of the most popular silent actresses. She's very pretty in this one, and her over-the-top mannerisms fit right in with the filmmaking style. If you like movies like Madame X and Back Street, you'll like this one.

Kiss, The (1929)

*** (out of 4)

A flirtatious married woman (Greta Garbo) has an innocent relationship with a young kid (Lew Ayres) but when she gives him a friendly kiss goodbye tragedy follows. The main highlight here is Garbo, in her final silent and Ayres, in his film debut and their chemistry together. The two work remarkably well together and their innocent relationship really comes off as fun. The "tragedy" that happens plays out well but the really poor direction by Jacques Feyder kills this from being better. The TCM print ran 62 minutes but Maltin's book lists the running time at 82 minutes. I don't think anything was cut but instead they played the film at a higher FPS rate. This was also MGM's final silent picture.

Married socialite Garbo gives an innocent kiss to a younger man Ayres who is infatuated with her, which conveys to the mysterious murder of her husband. Absurd, but entertaining drama was Garbo's and MGM's final silent, and is notable as Ayres first feature film. Contains music score and some sound effects.