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.

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.

It's sort of crazy, but I taped from TCM both, this german version of MGM's "Anna Christie", and the english one...but I got to see this one first, 'cos I'd heard that many people thought it was better than the english version.

Without having seen the other one, I cannot compare them, but anyway this is an excellent early talkie, with a straight-from-the-heart performance by Garbo. She looks very beautiful in this film, her face shines throughout, especially when Cameraman William Daniels, gets those gorgeous close-ups of her.

The atmosphere of the film seems different from the regular MGM stuff made on that era, it looks very similar to french or german expressionistic films from the thirties, well it was directed by a great french director, Monsieur Jacques Feyder, who had directed Garbo in 1929 in "The Kiss".

Theo Shall is excellent and gives an absolutelly believable performance as Anna's sweetheart, the hard-boiled, tough, sailor, who's just a kid in man's body. Also Hans Junkermann gives a very fine performance, as Anna's alcoholic father and Salka Viertel too, as a good-hearted old cheap floozie.

In all quite an experience, because it's the only film were you can listen to Garbo speak in a foreign language...'cos all the other films she did in either Sweden or Germany, were during the Silent Era.

Serious Flick.

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.

It has long been rumored that MGM was not too unhappy when Greta Garbo retired in 1941. She was a truly international star and a lot of her box office appeal was in the European market which after 12/7/41 was closed off for the foreseeable future to American films. Even the past two years hadn't been easy for Garbo's or anyone else's films to be seen there.

But early in the sound era it was the tradition of several studios to make foreign language versions of their films. Garbo's sound debut in Anna Christie was accompanied by a German language version with an entirely different cast of players. All were imported from Europe. Playing Charles Bickford's part is Theo Shall and playing George Marion's role is Hans Junkermann. I noted that both had substantial careers in the German cinema. It must have been at some expense for MGM to import these people to America, but MGM had a lot invested in Garbo and they wanted her career in sound to last.

Salka Viertel better known as a writer played Marie Dressler's role and she stayed in America. Her credit in Anna Christie is under her maiden name of Salka Steuerman and she was of left wing persuasion, enough to be blacklisted. But that was way in the future.

These folks were quite up to their English language counterparts. Garbo of course is eternal and so is Eugene O'Neill in the themes he writes about. Watching the German language version is further proof of the care that MGM took with Garbo's career.

She was in fact one of a kind.