"Anna Christie" is a an American German-language movie from 1930, so this one was made between the two big wars and to be precise 3 years before the Nazis came into power in Germany. It runs for approximately 80 minutes and it was directed by Belgian filmmaker Jacques Feyder. There exist two versions of this movie from the same year and the English-language version is from another director and with other actors (a non-German cast) except lead actress Greta Grbo who turned into a big Hollywood star around that time and was nominated for an Oscar for the English-language version. She scored two nominations that year, but lost out to Norma Shearer. In here, Garbo plays a woman who worked as a prostitute in the past and with these shadows still luring upon her, she tries to reconcile with her dad and a new man enters her life who is obviously also very concerned with the past of his girl, especially if you take into account how 85 years ago morals and values were something entirely different compared to today. Garbo looks pretty attractive, but I still felt she came off as way older than in her mid-20s. And she sounded older too. Maybe it was intended to show that the characters has aged a lot more compared to other woman from her age group. As a whole, I must say I was not really well-entertained with this film, let alone impressed with Garbo's performance of the title character. She sure has great screen presence and charisma, but I also felt that moments of overacting were way too frequent for my liking. Then again, this was generally a problem back then. Convincing subtlety was really rare, but it was even worse in the days of silent film. My final verdict: The negative outweighs the positive. I do not recommend the watch.
Review of Anna Christie
