As You Desire Me (1931)

While I am on a Garbo and 1931 kick, I thought I would post some comments on this oddity.  Here she co-stars with Melvyn Douglas with whom she actually made three films in her relatively brief talkie career.  Based on a play by the Italian dramatist Pirandello, she is introduced to us as a nightclub singer in an unflattering platinum blonde wig; she is spotted by a friend of Douglas' who is convinced that she is the wife who had been missing for nearly ten years after being raped on their estate by enemy soldiers and, yes, she has no recollection of her past life.  She reluctantly agrees to go to Douglas and indeed there is a portrait that looks just like her (without the discarded wig) and he is convinced that she is really his lost love.  While Douglas was always something of a solemn actor, even in his comedic roles, the sexual frisson that he and Garbo generate is remarkable -- even more than in the Gable film below -- and there are some very suggestive pre-Code scenes.  The cherry on the icing here is the appearance of Erich von Stroheim as the writer whom she has left behind and who does all he can to discredit her new identity.  Often billed as 'The Man you Love to Hate', he directed some truly baroque and wonderful silent films, but has been on screen as well from 1915; two of his most notable roles were in "La Grande Illusion" and "Sunset Boulevard".  His Teutonic heel-clicking persona disguises the fact that he was an always welcome and memorable presence.