When lifelong best friends Leo and Ulrich return home after completing their military training, Leo meets the stunning Felicitas at a railway station and is mesmerized by her beauty. A scandal follows, for which Leo is sent away. Returning home three years later, he discovers that much has changed.
Acting
Garbo's erotic intensity invented the movie star as we know it.
Cinematography
William Daniels' lighting worships Garbo's face like religious iconography.
Direction
Clarence Brown stages the steamiest non-talking seduction in cinema history.
Director
Clarence Brown
John Gilbert
Leo von Harden
Greta Garbo
Felicitas
Lars Hanson
Ulrich von Eltz
Barbara Kent
Hertha von Eltz
William Orlamond
Uncle Kutowski
George Fawcett
Pastor Voss
Eugenie Besserer
Leo's Mother
Marc McDermott
Count von Rhaden
Marcelle Corday
Minna
Frankie Darro
Boy who dances with Hertha (uncredited)
Philippe De Lacy
Leo as a boy (uncredited)
Virginia Marshall
Hertha as a girl (uncredited)
Maurice Murphy
Ulrich as a boy (uncredited)
Polly Moran
Family Retainer with bouquet (uncredited)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Garbo and Gilbert's infamous real-life affair began here; that chemistry you're seeing? Absolutely not acting.
This film essentially created the 'Garbo phenomenon' and proved silent cinema could be as erotically charged as talkies would later be.
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