Anna Christie (German-language version, 1930)

Anna Christie was Greta Garbo’s first talkie and it was in fact shot twice simultaneously, once in English and once in German for the German market (where MGM quite reasonably expected it to do very well). Garbo is in both versions but the supporting casts are different and the two versions had different directors. Clarence Brown directed the English-language version while Jacques Feyder directed the German version. And different writers - Walter Hasenclever wrote the dialogue for the German version and Frank Reicher wrote the German screenplay.

The English-language version doesn’t get a lot of love, even from Garbo fans. It was based on Eugene O’Neill’s play and it’s very very stagey. It was a very odd choice on MGM's part for Garbo's debut in talkies. There are those who think that the German-language version is the better movie - more daring, slightly more dynamic and with a better performance from Garbo. It’s the German version we are concerned with in this review.

The movie begins with a lengthy opening sequence in which a broken-down old sailor, Chris Christopherson (Hans Junkermann) and his equally broken-down mistress Marthy (Salka Viertel) are getting quietly plastered in a waterfront bar. Chris has received a letter from his daughter Anna whom he hasn’t seen for fifteen years. She’s coming to see him. Marthy persuades Chris to go to the restaurant next door to get some food in his stomach to sober him up a bit, Chris departs, and Garbo makes her famous entrance.

Chris had abandoned his family years earlier. He has convinced himself that Anna has had an idyllic childhood on a farm. He has no idea that she is a prostitute.

Chris is captain of a barge and he lives aboard. Anna moves in with him. Chris has grown to hate the sea. He is haunted by the fear that Anna will marry a sailor. Anna falls in love with the sea.

A fierce storm blows up and Chris rescues a shipwrecked sailor, Matt Burke (Theo Shall). Matt takes a liking to Anna. Like Chris he is convinced that Anna is a good decent girl. Matt despises whores.

Anna for her part has always hated men. During that supposedly idyllic childhood on the farm she was raped by the farmer’s son. Matt is the first man she has ever liked. And she slowly realises that she has fallen in love with him. For his part matt has decided that Anna is the girl he will marry.

The problem of course is that Anna is tortured by the idea that she is deceiving Matt. She has allowed him to build up a fantasy about her, a fantasy in which she is a sweet innocent virgin. She would obviously be a fool to tell him that she’s a whore but if she doesn’t tell him and they get married she will always feel guilty.

The German version, like the English version, is very stagebound. This was of course the very early days of talkies when the initial technical problems involved with sound technology imposed serious limitations on directors. It wasn’t easy to introduce movement into shots. It was easier to stick to a few basic camera setups. In this case there is the added problem that almost all the action takes place on a handful of sets, and they’re not exactly visually impressive sets. It’s not easy to make a sleazy waterfront bar or the cabin of a coal barge visually stunning.

It’s all very claustrophobic. That suits the content but it doesn’t make for exciting viewing.

It’s also, being essentially a filmed play, a story told mostly through dialogue rather than by visual means. Anna Christie never really manages to feel cinematic.

Jacques Feyder was a sound choice as director. He had directed Garbo in her last silent film, the stylish and very underrated The Kiss, a year earlier.

You have to bear in mind that it wasn’t just MGM who were worried how audiences would respond to Garbo’s voice. Garbo herself had no idea whether audiences would go for her Swedish accent (in fact audiences decided that her voice was sexy and exotic). She was almost certainly a bit nervous shooting the English-language version. On the other hand she was extremely comfortable speaking in German so she could focus more on her acting than on her voice. She does seem generally more at ease here than in the English version.

There can be no complaints abut the casting of the German-language version. Hans Junkermann as Chris, Theo Shall as Matt and Salka Viertel as Marthy are all good. Theo Shall is particularly good.

Garbo is excellent. It’s not a glamorous role but she manages to look terrific anyway while still being totally convincing as a very unglamorous, confused rather embittered woman.

The sea is clearly meant to have some deep symbolic significance. I guess it’s supposed to represent fate.

As for pre-code content, it’s made absolutely explicit that Anna is a prostitute. There’s anything aspect to the movie that is very very pre-code but I can’t reveal what it is without revealing spoilers. But this German version is very very obviously a pre-code movie.

The German version (with English subtitles) is included as an extra on the Warner Home Video DVD that was included in their superb Garbo boxed set some years ago. The print was obviously not in very good shape but it’s quite watchable and sadly it seems unlikely that anyone is ever going to bother doing a proper restoration.

Anna Christie is a movie that never escapes from its stage origins and it’s much too stagey and static and dialogue-heavy. It’s rather stodgy. Worth seeing for the fact that the story is told in such an overtly pre-code way, and for Garbo.