The attentions of a countess, Felicitas (Garbo), transform lifelong friends (John Gilbert and Lars Hanson) into bitter rivals, while the cat-and-mouse goings-on between the three parts of the triangle carry their own sophisticated ironies. Lensed by William Daniels, a master of black-and-white cinematography who shot twenty-one films with Garbo, Flesh and the Devil is a fine example of the artistic and technical heights achieved by the Hollywood silent cinema in the late 1920s. The intensity of the love scenes (more documentary than fiction) between Gilbert and Garbo made the film a box-office hit.