IMDb plot summary: A young woman reunites with her estranged father and falls in love with a sailor, but struggles to tell them about her dark past.
Directed by Clarence Brown. Starring Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, and George F. Marion.
Anna Christie is a film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play. It stars Greta Garbo in her first speaking role, which is interesting. The story follows a coal barge worker who gave his daughter up when she was very young to live on a farm with his family so she wouldn't have a life on the sea, which he thought would not be suitable for her. Now she's an adult and she's coming back to visit him, but there's darkness in her past that she is afraid to bring up now that she has a chance at happiness in her life. When I saw this movie, I thought back to when I read the play a couple years ago and I could have sworn that the play ended completely differently but no, it turns out I was wrong and both play and film have a happy ending -- a sort of abruptly happy ending, but a happy ending. Somehow the tragedy of the story and the box into which this woman finds herself, based on how she is supposed to have behaved as a woman, rang so loudly to me that I drowned out the happy ending in my memory. And honestly, I think this is still a tragedy, and a deeply unsatisfying one. Even if her new family will accept her as she is now, it all depends on their goodness, not that she is inherently worthy of love. The acting and the scripting in this is good and well paced and relatable, but I think no matter how this story is told, I'll never be all right with the ending.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Anna Christie < The Keep
Anna Christie > War of the Buttons (1994)
Anna Christie > Flypaper
Anna Christie < Venom
Anna Christie > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Anna Christie > If...
Anna Christie < Notorious
Anna Christie > Vantage Point
Anna Christie > The Rescuers
Anna Christie > An American in Paris
Anna Christie < Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
Final spot: #2023 out of 3542, or 43%.
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