A Greta Garbo Movie Gets the TV Guide Treatment: "Anna Christie"

 Up till now, in this blog series on Greta Garbo's film career (it starts here), I've covered three or four films at a time. But now that we are into the era of the talkies, I am devoting this post to a single film: 1930s "Anna Christie."  

Greta Garbo made two movies with "Anna" in the title, "Anna Karenina" (based on a Tolstoy novel) and "Anna Christie" (the film version of a play by Eugene O'Neill). 

Playwright O'Neil was an alcoholic, and also the son of an alcoholic father, and the storyline of "Anna Christie" focuses on a young woman's relationship with her barge-captain father Chris, who has a drinking issue of his own. 

The apple didn't fall far from the tree. Garbo's opening scene shows Anna coming into a bar and telling the barman not to be stingy when he pours her drink. 

There are at least two versions of "Anna Christie." A few months after the English-language version was filmed, MGM went back to its Culver City soundstage to make another version of the movie, this time with German dialogue 

In the German-language remake, Garbo wears a different outfit, is more expressionist in her acting, and is the only cast member who's the same in the two versions. For instance, Marrie Dressler's character Marthy is the woman Anna talks to in the opening scene of "Anna Christie."

In the German remake, actress Salka Viertal plays Marthy. 

In a previous post in this series, I gave a little information about Viertal, who was central to the community of European emigres who had settled in Hollywood. In today's post, I'll just direct you to this book about Salka Viertal's influence in Hollywood, including how Viertal, a personal friend of Garbo's,  helped write the script for  "Queen Christina."

If you are interested in watchin- the entire German-language version of "Anna Christie," you can do that here.

In both versions of "Anna Christie," it would be easy, even if you didn't know how the film originated, to see from the characters-talking-in-a-room look, that the movie was based on a play.  It's not like a modern drama. 

1930 was early in Hollywood history, and people were still figuring out what movies ought to look -- and sound -- like. New technology meant not only synchronized sound (no more trying to match up live music or a recording with a silent film) but also longer films. Silent movies tended to be short and and sometimes only had a few scenes with starkly simple settings. Jump cuts and awkward segues were the norm. So to a 1930 moviegoer, watching a movie based on a stage play set didn't look as -- well, staged -- as it does in modern times. 

The big thing about "Anna Christie," as you probably know, is that this was Garbo's first sound film. All the advertising made that exciting new development very clear.  (The 1984 romantic comedy "Garbo Talks" was titled after the ad campaign for "Anna Christie."

Now comes the part of the Greta Garbo series in which I give a brief plot summary in the style of TV Guide. In the case of "Anna Christie," there's not a lot to tell. It's a play by Eugene O'Neill, right? All the characters are unhappy and  emotionally damaged. They want to show love to each other but it's mostly too difficult for them. Specifically, in this film, Anna has come to  New York (and then Provincetown)  to stay with her widowed father Chris. When his daughter was yhoung, Chris sent Anna off to a farm to protect her from rough city life, but the female relative there did the Cinderella's stepmother bit.  Anna decided she'd find a way to live on her own. The way she found, sadly, was to become a teenage sex worker. 

Chris doesn't know any of this when Anna arrives, and he celebrates his daughter's return by getting blotto. Anna has some catching-up to do herself, as she figures out that Marthy, whom she'd met in the bar, had once supported herself that same way that Anna had done. Martthy now lives out-of-wedlock with Chris on his barge. 

Anna begins keeping house for her father, and through Chris, she meets a handsome blue-collar guy and she falls for him. There's angst because both Anna's boyfriend and her father idolize her, and she's worried they'll find out the truth of her past. At the end of the film, Anna decides that her dad and boyfriend are men of the world and that the only way to resolve things is to tell these two guys the ugly reality of what women sometimes have to do to stay alive. It's possible that the truth could make things right.  For a movie adapted from a Eugene O'Neill play, that's practically a happy ending. 

"Anna Christie" was the highest-grossing movie of 1930, and it received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Here's a contemporary review of  the film from The New Yorker:

Notes: There's a blog called A New Yorker State of Mind which looks at every issue of the magazine. That's where I found the review of the recently-ppremiered "Anna Christie."

  A Facebook Page called  The Divine Garbo in color is the source for the marquee photo at the top of this post. 

Next week: More Garbo talking pictures. 

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