Anna Christie (1930)(dvd)

Synopsis: “Gif me a vhiskey, ginger ale on the side — and don't be stingy, baby.” These were the first words spoken on the screen by the great Greta Garbo. She's perfectly cast here, in her first talkie, as Eugene O'Neill's lady with a past, but this turgid seafront drama is more than a little creaky today.

The film's famous advertisements shrieked “Garbo Talks!”, and that she did, and passed into movie history. But the dour Swede also talked in the simultaneously shot but shorter German language version of this film, and director Jacques Feyder was much more in sympathy with her European angst than was this version's director Clarence Brown, with the result that the Feyder version rings truer. The American version does however boast the wonderful Marie Dressler as an old sea lag.

Cast: Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford
Runtime: 89 min