Anna Christie (1930)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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!"

"Anna Christie" stars the great Greta Garbo in search of people - familiar faces or not-so familiar, doesn't matter. She comes to New York to find her father, and maybe a husband. This is the movie billed at the time as the one in which "Garbo Talks!". Well, she does, and turns out her voice was a pleasant one, although with a heavy accent. No problem, though, she plays a Scandinavian and so does her dad (George F. Marion).But prospects for a husband were not likely, as she was 'action' back in St. Paul - a fallen woman, to borrow a phrase. Enter Charles Bickford, who was shipwrecked and collapses on the deck of her father's barge. You would have to see the picture, but Bickford is afflicted here with a severe case of overacting. Apparently it was contagious, as the final scene in the film contains some of filmdom's worst scenery-chewing.Before I forget, I want to mention Marie Dressler, who is the main reason I rated "Anna Christie" a 7. She has actually a secondary part but she is terrific as a drunken 'wharf rat' and steals the scenes she is in. She raises an ordinary picture to a 'must see' and gives this dreary Eugene O'Neill drama a much-needed shot in the arm.

I'd read all the negative reviews for "Anna Christie". You know, the gripes about the static camera, out-dated acting and wordiness of the screenplay. But when I viewed it yesterday I found it remarkably affecting and enjoyable. Yep, Clarence Brown's camera remains stationary for the most part, and I'm pretty sure one of the microphones was concealed in the ship's light. Yep, there's a lot of dialogue and no spectacular action sequences. It's an early talkie with primitive technical aspects. But... then there's Garbo, Marie Dressler, George F. Marion and Charles Bickford, all proving that great acting is timeless.I believe "Anna Christie" is still one of Garbo's most iconic performances. And it's a wonderful performance from the Divine One, in a role that is really quite atypical for her. Yes, we've seen Garbo weary and almost beaten, yet never with bags under her eyes or her knocking back shots of whiskey. Garbo played so many (delightful) costume roles, that to see her play a contemporary woman is fascinating. She's not weighed down by heavy dresses or make-up. This performance seems quite raw from Garbo.The plot, from the O'Neill play, follows weary Swedish ex-prostitute Anna, and her reunion with her boozy, seaman father. Anna's had enough trouble for any girl of twenty, as she tells drunken, slovenly Marthy (Dressler)in a bar. She finds solace in a life at sea, and romance with a rough-hewn, but good-hearted, fisherman (Charles Bickford). But her past threatens to ruin it all.Charles Bickford is overlooked in Garbo's long line of (largely inferior) leading men. He's one actor who can actually share the screen with her and not get swallowed up by her magical presence. The pair have great chemistry together and seemed to enjoy working with one another. Dressler can never be accused of underplaying, and once again the grand dame is up to her old tricks, but she's terrific and convincing in her role, never annoying as in the dreadful "Dinner At Eight". I've never really heard of George F. Marion before, but he was wonderful as Garbo's father.This is Pre-Code, and rather gritty and dark by MGM's standards. I really enjoyed it, and while it may creak in some places, it's still wonderful.

This version of Anna Christie is better than the earlier silent version starring Blanche Sweet, though it is not a huge improvement. Unlike the earlier film, this one has expanded the father's mistress' role into a larger and comedic one starring Marie Dressler and the production values are a bit better overall. This isn't to say that I loved this movie--mostly because the story just seems very old-fashioned and corny but also because Dressler's comedic performance in some ways detracts from the focus of the film. However, in 1930, this sort of melodrama starring Greta Garbo (in her first sound film) played very well, but by today's standards, the acting at times just seemed "over-the-top" from time to time. Despite this, the story still is pretty compelling and the film is quite watchable.This film, by the way, was a "pre-Code" film. This means that the film was very racy by standards imposed just a few years later--with plot elements such as prostitution and some minor cursing. Those not used to the pre-Code films might be surprised by all this, but films made up until about 1935 or so often had nudity, violence and plot elements that NEVER would have been allowed in later years.Oddly, the DVD version of this film offers BOTH the original American version and the German version that was made concurrently starring a German-speaking cast. In the early days of "talkies", some studios (such as MGM and Universal) often made duplicate movies by using the same sets at night after filming wrapped for the day! In some cases, they had Hollywood actors phonetically speak the lines in different languages (Laurel and Hardy made some of these--in which they spoke in Spanish along with Spanish co-stars). And, in others, an entirely new cast was used (such as with the Spanish language version of Dracula). In the case of Anna Christie, Greta Garbo made a German language version with all new co-stars that is supposedly better than the American version. HOWEVER, the DVD did include this German version but with absolutely no subtitles or dubbing! So, as long as you are willing to watch an entire movie in a language you don't understand or know German, it's a waste having it on the DVD. Why didn't they include English language captions?!? I would have loved to have seen it in this case, but am not willing to try to guess at what they are saying--my knowledge of the language just isn't good enough to understand everything that's being said!