Anna Christie

Garbo's first speaking line, and it must have been thrilling to have such a tremendous foreign star able to make that transition from silent to sound.

The movie is "Annie Christie," the year is 1930, and it is an adaptation of the play by Eugene O'Neill. It concerns a young farm woman, Anna, from Minnesota who comes to New York to find her father, whom she hasn't seen in 15 years. Molested some time earlier, she hates men and has prostituted herself.

Her father takes her on his barge, and she comes to love the sea. One day, they rescue a young man (Charles Bickford), and he and Anna fall in love. However, neither he nor her father know anything of her past.

Garbo is very beautiful and her command of English is amazing. You can tell that she understands every word she is saying, just as you can tell when some actors have learned their role by rote. She acquits herself very well.

Marie Dressler as Marthy, a friend of her father's whom Anna meets in a bar, is marvelous, playing each scene as a drunk. And you really think she is. As someone wrote, you can smell the alcohol on her breath.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this is a very difficult film to watch. Sound and dealing with the camera when you have sound was all very new. The camera didn't move around so it is a very static movie. The actors have several scenes where they all talk at once.

An acting teacher once said, "Eugene O'Neill was our greatest novelist." The actors don't just talk at once, they talk incessantly. There is no action to be had.

I love Eugene O'Neill, I have seen his plays on stage. This film is 85 years old, and it shows.

Definitely worth seeing, however. After all, "Garbo talks!"

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.

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 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.

"Anna Christie" (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930), directed by Clarence Brown, was the motion picture event of the season where "Garbo talks!" Naturally she talked, but was never heard during her days (1926-1929) on the silent screen. With other silent film stars having already made the transition by 1929, the selection in what Garbo was to appear had to be a sound one. Considering Lon Chaney's talking debut being a remake to his 1925 success, THE UNHOLY THREE (1930), the possibilities of Garbo doing the same for any one of her silent screen successes. FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1927) or that of Anna Karenina from LOVE (1927) immediately come to mind. Garbo did play Anna Karenina again, but in 1935. Another Anna did get selected, one that was already filmed in 1923 starring Blanche Sweet. Taken from Eugene O'Neil's Pulitzer Prize winning play that originated on stage in 1921 starring Pauline Lord, considering the title character of Swedish heritage, it seemed natural for the Swedish born Garbo to tackle tat role herself. And so she did, earning an Academy Award nomination in the process. With her accent authentic, George Marion, who originated his role of Chris Christophersen on both stage and silent screen, was not or didn't appear to be. Whether faithful to O'Neill's writing or not really didn't matter for that "Anna Christie" proved to be a critical success.

The story gets underway as Old Chris (George Marion) a Swedish captain of the fishing boat, living on the barge with Marty Owens (Marie Dressler), his drunken waterfront mistress. After coming to the nearby bar for some drinks, Chris receives a letter with news that his daughter, Anna, is coming from St. Paul, Minnesota, for a visit. Chris, who hasn't seen Anna since she was a five-year-old child in Sweden, is a concerned how to handle their meeting after a 15-year separation. While in the next room, Anna, who calls herself Anna Christie (Greta Garbo) enters the waterfront bar where her first encounter being Marty, the woman Anna claims to be herself, "forty years from now." As both women drink some whiskeys, and Anna smoking cigarettes, she reveals her troubled past to Marty, being raised by cruel relatives on the farm, turning to prostitution in order to survive, and hating all men in the process. Having been released from jail and a two week hospital stay, Anna finally meets with her father as Marty secretly moves from the barge where Anna is to stay. As the two venture out to sea, they meet with a terrible storm, later rescuing Matt Burke (Charles Bickford), a tough talking Irish seaman, from a drifting raft where he and others had spent five days. When Matt shows interest in Anna, Chris objects, causing the two stubborn men to become rivals, forcing Anna to come between them.

For its initial 34 minutes, "Anna Christie" is virtually stage-bound, set mostly in a bar. Garbo's star entrance takes its toll 16 minutes into the story. From there she recites these spoken words to the barman in deep throat manner, "Gimme a vhiskey. Ginger ale on the side - and don't be stingy, baby," with occasional end of sentence catch phrases of "Alright, alright." With this, the long wait ends. "GARBO talks!" And does she ever. The voice not only fits her personality, but her character as well. How the story develops in early sound technique is another matter.

During its 88 minute time frame, director Clarence Brown breaks away from its staginess with outdoor scenery of the Brooklyn Bridge, the sea, as well as time away at Coney Island Amusement Park before resorting to stage-bound manner on the barge. There is no underscoring to set the mood but inter-titles ("The next morning - the waterfront of the East River - New York City." "Two days later in town off New England." "At anchor in an outer harbor along the Massachusetts coast.")in the silent film tradition placed between extended scenes.

With the supporting cast a limited few, only four take precedent. Charles Bickford proved way different from the usual Garbo co-stars. Definitely not the John Gilbert romantic type, but that of a roughneck Irishman, a vivid reminder of Victor McLaglen caricature found in John Ford directorial features reciting such typical lines as, "I can lick any man with one hand tied behind me back." The opposites attract combination of Garbo and Bickford gives equal balance to the nature of the story. George Marion, at times, bears a slight resemblance of character actor, Donald Meek. No doubt Meek might have been an interesting prospect to play Old Chris had a remake of ANNA Christie been considered in the 1940s with Ingrid Bergman in the lead. Marie Dressler's performance leaves a lasting impact, enough to have earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination had that category been around back then. In fact, her waterfront floozy in second hand clothing was no doubt a dress rehearsal for her upcoming role in MIN AND BILL (1930) for which won Dressler a Best Actress award by the Academy.

Seldom revived until its 1985 distribution to home video by MGM/UA, followed by occasional public television showings, "Anna Christie," along with Garbo's German-language version, can be found on cable TV's Turner Classic Movies. While the English version of 'Anna Christie" now available on DVD, is better known, many claim the German edition to be better and much more forthright. Though this "Anna Christie" may not hold up as well as Garbo's most notable assignments as CAMILLE (1936) or NINOTCHKA (1939), it's noteworthy, if nothing else, as the one where that term "Garbo talks!" started. (*** vhiskeys)