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November 06, 2006
Anna Christie
With all of my affection towards Garbo, last night I actually watched one of her movies for the first time. What a fascinating experience!
Anna Christie was her first 'Talkie'. So many of the huge Silent stars didn't transition over to the talking roles, due to a myriad of reasons from squeaky voices to just not being able to remember their lines. There was a lot of trepidation at the studio as to whether the foreign starlet could make the leap, mainly due to the fact that she hardly spoke any English at all.
So, sixteen minutes into this adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Garbo makes her dramatic entrance to the realm of talking pictures, stumbling into a bar, sitting down at a table, and uttering her first line, "Gimme a whiskey."
I thought I was in love with her before, but that entrance, followed by the full context of her performance in the film, made me...I don't know, what term best describes an intense admiration that outshines love? That's the emotion I have towards this actress, this phenomenon.
Garbo easily outshone the other actors in the film. I don't know their biographies, but judging their performances, I would say that their origins were on the stage, if not Vaudeville. Garbo, though, brought this...explosion of a performance. Decades, if not half a century, before method acting, she BECAME Anna Christie. There was nothing forced there, all natural, and so much emotion coming through in her eyes.
Wow. Finding out that she was having to literally memorize her lines because she had no idea what she was saying is even more astounding. We'll never see her like again.
Posted by Schamberger at November 6, 2006 11:32 AM