Anna Christie (1930)

Greta Garbo’s first talkie is also a fairly entertaining adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s classic story of a woman trying to escape her lurid past. Her father (George Marion) who thinks his daughter has led a clean life receives a letter from her that she’s coming to visit & stay with him. His dumpy girlfriend (Marie Dressler) moves out of the barge which he’d been sharing with her to keep up appearances. Garbo returns “home” from her (as yet unknown) sordid life meets & befriends Dressler in a bar on the wharf and speaks her first words on screen “give me a whiskey ginger ale on the side and don’t be stingy baby”. Later her father rescues a seaman (Charles Bickford) from the water who (ignorant of her past) then romances his daughter. When Bickford wants to marry Garbo she must decide whether to tell him about her past or not. If she does will it jeopardize her happiness and potential life with him? Garbo director Clarence Brown and the film’s B&W Cinematography received Oscar nominations.

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