Romance

Film review of director Clarence Brown’s period romantic drama with Greta Garbo as a Polish Countess romanced by Napoleon (Charles Boyer).

Synopsis

Countess Marie Waleska (Greta Garbo) and her elderly husband (Henry Stephenson) are violently awoken one night by Russian troops who trash their house and stop just short of raping the mistress of the mansion.

During a snow storm, Marie bumps into a charming and lost traveler (Charles Boyer). At a ball soon afterwards, he is revealed to be the recently crowned French Emperor Napoleon.

Poland finds itself amidst the tumult of external politics and, at the urging of Polish leaders who feel she could influence Napoleon to make Poland independent, Marie is urged to become his mistress.

She complies and sets in motion as series of events that will tear the two of them apart emotionally.

Review, by Jason Day

Hee, hee, hee. So you are Emperor of France. And my very good friend, His Majesty, King Louis Sixteenth abdicated in your honor, I suppose?

Senile Countess Pelagia (Maria Ouspenskaya) interrogates a suspicious man (Napoleon) during a game of cards.

In the mid-1930s, actress Greta Garbo could sit back and rest on her achievements.

Since 1926 with a slew of sizzling, cinematic romantic escapades, she became one of US movie studio MGM’s most bankable stars. Her movies, averaging two-three per year, made colossal profits, many millions more than their total production and promotion.

Not one had lost any serious money – The Temptress (1926), her only US film with director Mauritz Stiller, the man who discovered her, went a tad over budget due to his pernickety style and failure to adjust to a more regimented production style.

Tragic, thwarted love. Greta Garbo (seen with Charles Boyer) is on safe terrain in this bloated, dull, overlong take on a romance that scandalised early 19th-century Polish society.

Previously Garbo had been almost exclusively under the loving lights of cinematographer William Daniels, but for Conquest MGM gave her expressionist master Karl Freund (later chief photographer for Desilu Productions and umpteen episodes of US 50’s/60’s TV sitcom smash I Love Lucy).

He wasn’t the right man for the job as Greta looks dull and greasy rather than divine and goddess-like.

Was Conquest the early stage of a plot to elbow the old gal out of her highly lucrative contract? Previously, she had script and leading man approval but here the writing is overly wordy if not flabby) at times and, for once, she has a leading man in Boyer who isn’t afraid of her and (admittedly) has a far better role.

Did Clarence Brown – Garbo’s usual director – and MGM top brass conspire to make her ugly and uninteresting? Or, was she so dissatisfied and disappointed with the profession of producing movies in America that she was content to start letting go of creative control?

For some bizarre reason, Greta’s screenwriters – including her pal Salka Viertel – concentrate on Napoleonic politics and neglect the romance between the lead characters; a reckless decision for a hugely budgeted romance movie.

Even better than Boyer is famed acting coach Maria Ouspenskaya as Garbo’s senile aunt who has no idea who Napoleon is but thinks he’s cheated her at cards and has an epic meltdown about it in the movie’s second-best scene.

Best scene? The opening as Russian troops storm the Walweska house, insult the elderly master (Henry Stephenson), turn a prize harpsichord into a haybale for their horses and stop just short of gang-raping Garbo.

Director Brown may have been mostly off form with Conquest, but he shows he has the power to tantalise his audience.

Cast & credits

Director: Clarence Brown. MGM. 1h 53m/113 min. (U).

Producer: Bernard H. Hyman.
Writers: Zoe Akins, S.N. Behrman, Samuel Hoffenstein, Talbot Jennings, Helen Jerome, Salka Viertel, Carey Wilson.
Camera: Karl Freund.
Music: Herbert Stothart.
Sets: Cedric Gibbons, William A. Horning.

Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Alan Marshall, Henry Stephenson, Leif Erickson, Dame May Whitty), Maria Ouspenskaya, C. Henry Gordon, Claude Gillingwater, Scotty Beckett.