Anna Christie

This early sound era adaptation of O'Neill's "Anna Christie" would be a decent movie worth seeing on its own, but it is Greta Garbo that makes it particularly worthwhile. The rest of the production is solid, and for the most part, its limitations are common to many other sound movies made in 1930. Garbo herself rises well above the level of the rest of the production, and Marie Dressler is also memorable and effective in her smaller role.

It's easy enough to see why a story like this was chosen for Garbo's first "talking" role. It provides a female central character who offers a ready-made opportunity for an actress like Garbo to demonstrate a good range of abilities, from strength to tenderness, from coarseness to elegance. She has good scenes with several of the other characters. Dressler's raucous performance works well, and she has some very good moments. George Marion is very believable as Garbo's father.

The story itself is an interesting one, with some worthwhile themes, though it does not necessarily lend itself that well to cinema. There are a few times when it might as well just be a filmed stage play, but then there are also a number of times when the camera picks up some good atmospheric details, such as the dockside setting or the New York skyline, that make a good complement to the emotional story.

A woman with a past returns to her alcoholic father living on a shabby boat and falls in love with a sailor.

A deliberately grim movie gained fame as Garbo's first talkie (revealing her warm, silky deep voice), and was simultaneously made in Germany - from a well-known O'Neill play. This version now seems pretty stilted and shows the most typical mistakes of early talkies, but full of vivid moments of great power, full-blooded performances (especially the genial interplay between Garbo and Dressler)and the rare Hollywood quality of gritty realism.

Chris is a sailor who owns a coal barge. He finds out that the daughter he hasn't seen since she was an infant, Anna (Greta Garbo), is coming to see him. What he doesn't know is that she had a childhood of abuse and molestation followed by her running away to St. Paul and becoming a prostitute. He says he left her in Minnesota for her own good, to grow up on a farm, but it seems the truth of the matter is that he just couldn't be bothered. As most such men do, he's very interested in his neglected child now that he's old and she's grown. One night Chris and Anna are out on his barge and rescue several sailors. Among them is Matt (Charles Bickford), an Irishman who takes a shine to Anna. But she's still struggling with her past. Complications ensue.

MGM was the only studio Greta Garbo ever worked for in America, and as a studio, MGM was late to the game of talking film. MGM was aware of the risk of putting Garbo before the microphones, and so they delayed her talking debut until 1930, and she actually made the last silent film MGM ever made. But making her character someone who grew up around Swedish Americans in Minnesota explains her accent and it suits her.

Anna Christie, like so many early talking films, is too talkie. Everybody, even tertiary characters, have endless dialogue. Everything is static. By this time the static camera was not such a problem, so I don't know why this comes off as a filmed play.

Garbo, who was always a film actress, seems to get acting in a sound film just fine, even if she does over-emote at times, as though she's still in a silent film and nobody can hear her. Bickford is a bit of a mystery though. He was a stage actor before sound came to films, yet you'd never know that by watching this. He'd made three films before this one - all with sound - so I have no idea what the problem was.

The one really bright spot here? Marie Dressler. She plays Chris's mistress and a former prostitute. Upon meeting Anna, she immediately figures out that Anna belongs to her union, so to speak, but she doesn't give Anna away. Marie Dressler is doing some outrageously good acting here. Her ability to make magic out of plain life jump-started her career.

I'd say this is worth your while for its place in film history.

Garbo's first spoken words in this 1930 film electrified audiences and became part of Hollywood legend. Garbo had become a star in her first American film, The Torrent, in 1926. And audiences waited til this film to see if Garbo could make the transition to talkies. She did. And while Pola Negri, Vilma Banky, and Renee Adoree fell by the wayside because of their accents, Garbo sailed on for another decade. Despite the staginess of this film, Garbo is really excellent, especially in the opening scene with the equally great Marie Dressler as Marthy. The two great stars trade dirty looks and sharp words as they size each other up while they have a few drinks and set the tone for the remainder of the film. Garbo was 25; Dressler was 60. Charles Bickford is OK as Matt, and George F. Marion is good as Old Chris. Marion originated this role on Broadway in 1922 and also played it in the 1923 silent version with Blanche Sweet. This Eugene O'Neill play is a true classic yet, oddly, was never filmed again. Anna Christie ranks as one of Garbo's greatest performances. And despite the staginess of the film and the grimness of the story, she is truly a marvel. See this one for Garbo and Dressler!

This is an amazingly well-filmed early talkie adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play. Its major drawback is a static camera, and as a result it comes off much of the time as the filmed play it is, which is a pity, for it's a good piece of primitive moviemaking, made at a time when sound was posing all kinds of technical problems, and as a result most films were experimental whether or not this was their maker's intention. Garbo is as mysterious and charismatic as she was in her silent films, and her entrance is still classic. Her voice is strangely deep, almost boyish, which only enhances her already seductively eccentric persona. As her boyfriend, Charles Bickford is appropriately virile,--he was apparently born craggy--and a perfect counterpart to the divine Garbo. His Irish brogue is not bad at all, and he seems always a natural man of the sea, very O'Neill-like in his independent, brooding nature. As Garbo's (very) confused father, George Marion seems truly from another time. He has the sort of face and voice,--open, unmannered, totally without guile--that has vanished from the earth. Marie Dressler is also in the O'Neill swing of things. Her blank expression and intensity around the eyes speaks volumes, as she plays her boozy character as a woman at times bordering on psychosis. Poetic license, perhaps, as this is not in the script, but we can forgive Miss Dressler's excesses; she is too good at it not to. The story ends with a movement to the next thing, as distinct from resolution, which isn't the author's cup of tea; and those who like their films neatly worked out in the end will be disappointed by the absence of any real surprise. In Anna Christie we are in O'Neill country, a place of sea, storms and fog, a feeling of all-pervading and damnable uncertainty, which we would now call ambivilance, or anxiety neurosis. Rather than analyze this mood the author simply and wisely presents it, as weather, land, ocean and people intertwine and address one another in a unique language we feel priveleged to have heard.