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!"
