M-G-M. Director Victor Seastrom; Screenplay Dorothy Farnum, John Colton; Camera Oliver Marsh; Editor Conrad A. Nervig
Greta Garbo
Lars Hanson
Lowell Sherman
Polly Moran
Dorothy Cumming
John Mack Brown
No denying Greta Garbo. Her beauty is of a simple sort; nothing exotic or hectic - just a super-pretty blonde. And director Victor Seastrom knows just how to handle her.
In this instance [from Gladys Unger's play Starlight] she is a peasant girl from Brittany, and here and there the incidents suggest anecdotes of the life of Sarah Bernhardt, though this thread is not consistently followed. She comes to Paris to find fame as an actress. The man who brings her there is her mother's lover, played by Lowell Sherman in his best manner. She falls in love with Lucien, a private soldier, and gets him into all sorts of grief, including arrest as a deserter and prosecution for stealing a dress she admires.
The romance is a rough-and-tumble, cute and juvenile. Greta flirts charmingly, and Lars Hanson, whose features do not indicate Scandinavian origin, takes his love-making quite seriously, which gives a fine effect to her work.
Silent. (B&W) Extract of a review from 1928. Running time: 95 MIN.
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