Anna Christie

Garbo Talks. So, unfortunately, does everyone else (following an evocation of the foggy wharfside, marvellously lit by William Daniels), carefully enunciating Eugene O'Neill's quaint attempts at ethnic speech patterns for a good twenty minutes before Garbo makes her appearance as the prostitute wearily seeking haven on her father's barge (and there finding love with a young seaman). As soon as she makes her entry, hovering in the saloon doorway trailing an almost visibly murky past, one knows one is in safe hands. Even then it is several minutes before she is allowed to risk her memorable first line: 'Gimme a whisky with a ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby'. She's terrific, but she gets little support from O'Neill's play (a conventional romance tarted up with pseudo poetics) or the rest of the cast (with the exception of Dressler's gin-soaked harridan).