Anna Christie

Anna Christie (1931)

On its own terms, this version of Garbo's Anna Christie, shot a year later in German with a whole new cast, is just toned down and refined enough to work better than the English version (both are American MGM productions). Garbo is if anything more commanding (or more beautiful as a screen presence) and her acting is more restrained. And she seems frankly more at ease, probably for a lot of reasons, but we can speculate that she was no longer making her first talking picture, so had adjusted quickly.

Without comparing always one film to the other, this Anna Christie is still the same O'Neill play with too many words. His themes of a woman wanting love without losing her independence are here, but it comes off as oddly old fashioned anyway. There are some scenes missing--the Coney Island section is shortened and isn't as good--but overall it's a direct echo of the first film. The director, Jacques Feyder (Belgian-French), is simply redoing what was done already, which I assume must be a frustrating experience.

It's interesting to see both films in succession because they are blocked out exactly the same way (not only the sets, but the shots, are all the same). There is an occasional scene lifted from the earlier film--some of the storm, understandably, but also a brief scene where Marie Dressler (from the English language version) is walking with her friend on a plank over a canal, drunk as can be. But they are just silhouettes, and when the next scene shows their faces, we see the German actors taking their parts. There is no replacing Dressler, for sure, but for me the German father is more believable and honest in his performance.

Clearly the themes--immigration, wayward fathers, daughters turning to prostitution, and the troubles of finding true love--have strong currents back then, especially with European threads. Garbo, appropriately, plays a Swedish young woman. A pleasure.

The German version of this early work by Eugene O'Neill is just as good, if not better, than the US version. I prefer Marie Dressler in the American version, but Garbo seems a bit more at ease in German than in English. She is hot and interesting in both languages. Her performance is believable and her co-actors also do a very good job. I preferred Bickford in the American version, but that is just my personal taste. The American version is, at times, a bit talky, but the German version seems to flow a bit more naturally. So, these differences tend to balance each other and the end results are about the same.

This version is much better than the English-language version: brisker pacing (although very, very slow by modern standards), generally better performances, and even Eugene O'Neill's somewhat ponderous dialog is rendered more believable in the subtitles. While Marie Dressler's performance in the English version is fabulous, Salka Viertel's in the German version is also very, very good, just different. Garbo seems more natural in the German version, perhaps because she was at that time more comfortable speaking German than speaking English. Garbo's acting style may have been a bit old-fashioned, but she was never dull in any film. A true star.

In New York, the alcoholic skipper of a coal barge Chris Christofferson (Hans Junkermann) receives a letter from his estranged twenty year old daughter Anna "Christie" Christofferson (Greta Garbo) telling that she will leave Minnesota to stay with him. Chris left Anna fifteen years ago to the countryside to be raised by relatives in a farm in St. Paul and he has never visited his daughter.

Anna Christie arrives and she is a wounded woman with a hidden dishonorable past since she had worked for two years in a brothel to survive. She moves to the barge to live with her father and one night, Chris rescues the sailor Matt (Theo Shall) and two other fainted sailors from the sea. Soon Anna and Matt fall in love with each other and Anna has the best days of her life. But when Matt proposes to marry her, she is reluctant and also haunted by her past. Matt insists and Anna opens her heart to Matt and to her father disclosing the darks secrets of her past.

"Anna Christie" is the first talkie of Greta Garbo and a heartbreaking story of a young woman that finds redemption through love. I bought the DVD with both versions of 1930 and 1931, and Jacques Feyder's version in German is better than Clarence Brown's. The German version is not restored. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Anna Christie"

a while back, I saw the English language version of "Anna Christie" and mildly enjoyed it. While not bowled over it, it was better than the earlier Blanche Sweet version. And, when I found out that there was yet another version--ALSO starring Greta Garbo, I was intrigued but had a hard time finding it. Fortunately, Turner Classic Movies recently showed this German language version and I found it was a bit better than the English language one.

First, some background about the German language version. I don't say "German version" because this one was actually made in the USA by MGM. Why would MGM do this--using the same leading lady?! Well, it seems that once the studios switched to sound, they missed all the money they'd made in foreign sales and tried something very radical. Instead of using subtitles or re-dubbing the film, MGM actually made multiple versions of its most popular stars' films. Aside from this Garbo version, MGM made many Laurel Hardy in Italian, Spanish, French and German! And, like the Garbo film, these other versions were quite different from the American versions--with mostly foreign language-speaking supporting actors filling in for the normal supporting actors! So why did I like it more than Garbo's other "Anna Christie"? Well, the story was close but I noticed two main differences. First, because German standards and morality were different from that in the States, the German version is much more explicit in saying that Anna had worked in a brothel, though this word and the word 'prostitute' were still not used. In the regular American version, this was much, much more vague--and made the story seem a bit silly. The German version explains a lot and makes more sense. Second, while I adore the films of Marie Dressler, she was NOT a positive addition to the English language version, as she played the part a bit broader--more for laughs. And, considering how serious the story is, this seemed out of place.