Instrumentation
3(=picc).2(II=ca).3(II=Ebcl.III=Ebcl+bcl).2(II=cbsn) -4.3.2.btrbn.1 - timps - perc(2): tam-t/susp.cym/cyms/SD/military drum/TD/BD/BD+cym/glsp/tgl/hand bell(station)/mark chimes/bell tree - pno(=organ+cel) - harp - strings (min 10.8.6.6.4)
Availability
Full score and parts for hire
Programme Notes
Starring: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert
Director: Clarence Brown
Production Company: MGM USA, 1926
Film Print: 35mm B&W print available from Photoplay Productions (Film Speed: 18-21 frames per second)
Recorded for video
Flesh and the Devil was the first of five films in which Greta Garbo co-starred with her real-life lover John Gilbert. Both on and off screen, theirs was one of Hollywood's greatest romances. Set in Prussia, the film is a melodrama of love, adultery, duels and retribution, based on Hermann Sudermann's novel 'The Undying Past'. Davis uses rich scoring with echoes of 19th-century German Romanticism to complement Garbo and Gilbert's on-screen romance. The glorious love theme, as heard for instance in the garden scene, is one of his finest creations.