Garbo Talks.
That was the only thing one needed to know about this adaptation of the 1922 Eugene O’Neill play. Finally, a voice to match the image. And, in a way, Garbo was already Garbo as we think of her. She was aloof and exotic and passionate and reclusive and beautiful and strange. Sort of like Angelina Jolie, minus the brood of children and tattoos, but totally with the famous relationships and alleged husband-stealing and alleged bisexuality. Imagine we had never heard Jolie speak. And then, she spoke. All of which is to say, Anna Christie was a Big Deal.
MGM, apparently firm believers in the pleasures of delayed gratification, held Garbo’s talkie debut back for a good long time. The Jazz Singer had debuted in 1927, after all, though it took a bit of time for Hollywood (some believed that talking pictures were a fluke and a fad) to adapt. Remember, also, that thousands of theaters around the country would have to upgrade their own set-ups to accommodate talking pictures, and this took a few years. The Jazz Singer may have been a big hit, but it would be a couple of years, in come cases, until people could hear it.
As for historical context, the country was mired in the dark of the Great Depression (Black Tuesday was October 29, 1929– a scant three months prior). Hoover was president and hemoraghing popularity as the Depression swallowed the country. Folks flocked to movie theaters in an effort to forget their trouble for a few hours. By the way, some analysts are predicting that 2009 will be the best year yet for the film industry (and this article was written pre-Star Trek and Angels & Demons).
So, Anna Christie. I had never seen it before tonight, but for the famous scene You-Tubed above. Friends, MGM wasn’t fooling about the delaying the gratification of Garbo Talks. She doesn’t even come on the scene until sixteen minutes in, but you hardly notice it, thanks to Marie Dressler as the boozy, blowzy Marthy. Dressler, a former vaudeville and silent film star (such as in Tillie’s Punctured Romance opposite Chaplin) was 61 and cleaning houses when screenwriter Frances Marion persuaded her MGM bosses to cast her. Dressler just about walked about with the movie and would be an Oscar-winning box office star until her 1934 death. After watching Anna Christie, its easy to understand why. Broad and with a face like a catfish, Dressler is all warmth, earthy good humor, and grace. There is an effortlessness to her comedy and she is real without becoming maudlin or saccharine. Like the recent Susan Boyle phenomenom (granted, the best part of that whole business is watching Simon’s heart grow three sizes), Dressler was a reminder that good things can happen to ordinary, deserving people when they perhaps least expect it.
Dressler is the high point of Anna Christie and, after sharing a charming scene with Garbo, she departs for most of the rest of the movie. And Garbo? She’s a bit of a downer. Even when she’s supposed to be happy, she seems uneasy and morbidly attached to gloom. At 20, Anna has returned home to Sweden and her seafaring father Chris Christofferson (George F. Marion, yup, like that other Kris.). Both father and daughter look forward to a cozy future. A boyfriend (Charles Bickford) washes up for Anna (literally) and it looks to be smooth sailing from there on.
Then, that fickle finger of fate intervenes and Anna is forced to confess her past to her father and boyfriend. Can I tell you about this scene? Because its really quite something. With absolute relish and a stubborn pride, she tells them for the past two years she’s been a prostitute. She really does say that in nearly so many words. And she dares them to call her out on it. She tells them she doesn’t need a man and, with a sneer, that she’s not “decent.” She rips into them about the whole Madonna/whore complex, a theme that’s still played out weekly, relevantly, on Gossip Girl. And this is 1930, remember. Women had only been voting for a decade and that was equal rights in name only. Imagine you’re a woman sitting in a theater in 1930 watching the most glamourous, famous star give a proto-women’s lib speech, showing up her father and her lover. It must have been simultaneously empowering and frightening to think that a woman could speak so forcefully about sexual politics and her history and own it. It’s a pretty righteous scene and Garbo tears into it. For a moment, at least, she’s electric.
The film ends quickly thereafter with some gibberish about crosses and Catholicism v. Lutheranism. Anna is forgiven and absolved, I suppose. A few years later when the Production Code would grow teeth, I imagine Anna Christie would have been deemed immoral and unfilmable. Anna would have had to drown in some act of self-sacrifice leaving the boyfriend to marry the local librarian or some such. We’re not there yet, though, and Anna is allowed to have her past and a future.
As a postscript, “Gimme a whiskey with ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby” is the (justly) famous line, but I’d rather let Marthy (Dressler) have the last word:“’Ladies entrance?’ Well, why not, said she with all the dignity in the world.”
Oscar Nominated for Director, Actress (Garbo) and Cinematography
Directed by Clarence Brown; Written by Frances Marion, adapted from Eugene O’Neill; Starring Greta Garbo (Anna), Charles Bickford (Matt) and Marie Dressler (Marthy)
Available on DVD, either alone or as a part of the Garbo Signature Collection.
DVR it, June 15 at 8:00 a.m. on TCM
Anna Christie at TCM, IMDb, Allmovie and Wikipedia.
Tags: Charles Bickford, Clarence Brown, Frances Marion, Greta Garbo, Irving Thalberg, Marie Dressler, MGM
