Anna Christie (1931)

A young woman reunites with her estranged father and falls in love with a sailor, but struggles to tell them about her dark past.

Director:

Jacques Feyder

Writers:

Walter Hasenclever (German dialogue), Frances Marion (adaptation),

Stars:

Greta Garbo, Theo Shall, Hans Junkermann

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Greta Garbo	...	Anna
Theo Shall	...	Matt
Hans Junkermann	...	Chris
Salka Viertel	...	Marthy (as Salka Steuermann)

Storyline

In New York, the alcoholic skipper of a coal barge Chris Christofferson receives a letter from his estranged twenty year old daughter Anna "Christie" Christofferson telling that she will leave Minnesota to stay with him. Chris left Anna fifteen years ago to the countryside to be raised by relatives in a farm in St. Paul and he has never visited his daughter. Anna Christie arrives and she is a wounded woman with a hidden dishonorable past since she had worked for two years in a brothel to survive. She moves to the barge to live with her father and one night, Chris rescues the sailor Matt and two other fainted sailors from the sea. Soon Anna and Matt fall in love with each other and Anna has the best days of her life. But when Matt proposes to marry her, she is reluctant and also haunted by her past. Matt insists and Anna opens her heart to Matt and to her father disclosing the darks secrets of her past.

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Plot Keywords:

sailor | roller coaster | alcoholism | sea captain | fog | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

TV-PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

German

Release Date:

22 December 1930 (Germany)

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

85 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The original Broadway production of "Anna Christie" by Eugene O'Neill opened on November 2, 1921 at the Vanderbilt Theatre, ran for 177 performances and won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1922.

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Connections

Alternate-language version of Anna Christie (1930)

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Soundtracks

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"
(1878) (uncredited)
Written by James Allen Bland
Played on the Coney Island carousel

User Reviews

Great Movie

It's sort of crazy, but I taped from TCM both, this german version of MGM's "Anna Christie", and the english one...but I got to see this one first, 'cos I'd heard that many people thought it was better than the english version.

Without having seen the other one, I cannot compare them, but anyway this is an excellent early talkie, with a straight-from-the-heart performance by Garbo. She looks very beautiful in this film, her face shines throughout, especially when Cameraman William Daniels, gets those gorgeous close-ups of her.

The atmosphere of the film seems different from the regular MGM stuff made on that era, it looks very similar to french or german expressionistic films from the thirties, well it was directed by a great french director, Monsieur Jacques Feyder, who had directed Garbo in 1929 in "The Kiss".

Theo Shall is excellent and gives an absolutelly believable performance as Anna's sweetheart, the hard-boiled, tough, sailor, who's just a kid in man's body. Also Hans Junkermann gives a very fine performance, as Anna's alcoholic father and Salka Viertel too, as a good-hearted old cheap floozie.

In all quite an experience, because it's the only film were you can listen to Garbo speak in a foreign language...'cos all the other films she did in either Sweden or Germany, were during the Silent Era.

Serious Flick.