Torrent (1926)

Directed by Monta Bell

Adaptation by Dorothy Farnum, based on the novel Entre naranjos by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Titles by Katherine Hilliker and H. H. Caldwell

Runtime: 1 hr, 28 min

Whenever I get the chance, which unfortunately isn’t that often, I try to watch some silent cinema.  I’m not entirely sure what it is, but the form of the silent picture attracts me.  Further, in my quest to catch up on the history of film, I realized that I had never seen a picture starring Greta Garbo, the Swedish actress whose presence in a talking picture became sufficient for a tagline.  Torrent, the first film that Garbo made in America, provided a chance to satisfy both of these urges.

Garbo, who was just 20 at the time of the film’s release, plays Leonora, a Spanish peasant girl with a talent for singing.  At the start of the film, she is in a relationship with the son of her family’s landlords, Don Rafael Brull (Ricardo Cortez).  This is much to the displeasure of Rafael’s mother (Martha Mattox), who plots throughout the film to keep the two apart, including arranging for her son to marry the wealthy daughter of a pig farmer, Remedios (Gertrude Olmstead).

The summary is a gross over-condensation of the plot points, as a great number of events occur between Leonora and Rafael over a period of many years.  It’s just that most of these happenings are not fleshed out well; it would have been better for the filmmakers to trim out some encounters and actually develop the rest.  We see the two in bedrooms, during floods, backstage in between acts of an opera, but all too often Torrent feels like a slideshow of a couple’s life.

Indeed, a film such as Torrent suffers when the subplots to the central romance are more interesting that the main thread.  Leonora’s subplot involves her budding singing career, including her tutelage under the town’s barber, Cupido (Lucien Littlefield), who early on is a scene stealer, though somewhat tonally out of place.  Meanwhile, Rafael must struggle with the influence his mother has over his love life; these scenes in particular do a fine job of establishing Rafael character and allow Cortez’s acting chops to shine.

The problem with the plot is compounded upon consideration of the story’s structure.  When we begin, Leonora and Rafael are already together; if the audience is to root for the characters to make it by the end, then the audience is effectively rooting to maintain the status quo.  There is very little forward passion in such a tale; the only way to progress the relationship would be to break it apart.  As such, I knew from about ten minutes in that the resolution to the conflict could not be satisfying from an intellectual or emotional perspective.

This is not to say that every scene between Leonora and Rafael fails.  One of the film’s strongest moments occurs after Leonora, who has become an operatic sensation by the name of La Brunna, returns to her home and stands in her family’s orange grove.  Rafael enters the garden wanting to rekindle their romance, but ends up saying he wants to look at the orange blossoms.  The resulting few minutes showcase the built-up resentments and frustrations that both characters feel after all the time that’s passed.

Indeed, this sequence showcases some of Garbo’s better acting moments in Torrent.  I got the feeling, however, either that Garbo was still attempting to nail down her technique or that she was getting conflicting directional cues.  In particular, her facial expressions sometimes stand at odds with what’s supposed to be occurring on screen.  This is especially true during her characters first reunion with her mother (Lucy Beaumont).  Rather than appearing overjoyed or bitter or any expected emotion, Garbo appears in a semi-seductive pose; it’s as if the film were improperly spliced together.

While such an editing error seems unlikely, it would not be out of line with the film’s somewhat convoluted production history.  Originally, when MGM brought Garbo over from Sweden, it was not her but her mentor and director, Mauritz Stiller, whom MGM really wanted.  Garbo was only included in the deal to satisfy Stiller (who, as it turned out, never directed a single film for the studio).  Further, Garbo was not the original actress of Leonora—it was Alma Rubens, the wife of Ricardo Cortez, who had to pull out due to illness.  Finally, Stiller was at one point slated to direct Torrent, but was ultimately replaced with studio hand Monta Bell.

The seemingly aimless nature of the movie’s production fits the finished product a bit too well.  Torrent has much to recommend in it: aside from the main performances, the title flood sequence is quite exciting, even if it appears to be occurring at an exceptionally goofy pace, and the musical accompaniment by Arthur Barrow is simply superb.  But all of this together cannot compensate for the pedestrian story telling.  From an historical perspective it is worth a look, but for pure enjoyment, it’s a film that can safely be passed over.