Producer Thomas Ince had an instinct for what would please audiences, although this awareness did not always please him, as I outline in my Ince biography. The greatest exception was Anna Christie; Blanche Sweet, who would play the title role, later gave him "great credit for producing Anna Christie. He was a very commercial man. Well, lots of people are—they like to have their films reach large audiences and that's all right. But Tom put his own money into making Anna, and it had been controversial in New York ...."
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer-prize winning play had premiered two years before, and Ince's production marked the first of his theatrical presentations brought to the screen. Anna Christie is delivered with intensity, sometimes to the point of overacting, but John Griffith Wray's direction avoids any sense of the stage origins. In adapting the play, Bradley King merely rearranged some of the chronology and cut all but the most essential dialogue for intertitles. As one reviewer noted, "The notable success of the picture lies in the fact that it has done precisely what Mr. O'Neill did, in terms of motion pictures. There is no padding, no change of characterization, no tampering with the author's intention. Every scene that enlarges the horizon of the play by virtue of the greater mobility of picture-making is a legitimate expansion of what is suggested by the text.... As far as is humanly possible they have been faithful to the spirit of the play in story, setting and acting." After seeing the movie, O'Neill telegrammed Ince to say, "Your motion picture of Anna Christie is a fine, true representation, faithful to the spirit and intent of the play."
The sea is the motif, and its backgrounds constantly add to the mood, echoing the emotions. The movie opens on atmospheric shots before cutting to the coastal village seldom visited by Anna's father, Chris Christopherson. (The role is played by George F. Marion, who originated the role on Broadway and worked for five weeks at $1,000, then would reprise it in 1930 in the M-G-M remake. ) The 5-year-old Anna plays on the shore, her naiveté with a small boat almost causing her to drown. Simultaneously, her father breaks a doll he had bought for her during a spree in Shanghai. It is a forecast of the years to come. A sailor, he can never save money because of his drinking, and blames "that old devil sea" for all his misfortunes. He arranges for Anna and her mother to live with relatives, believing she will have a life a sailor could not provide.
Fifteen years later, Chris, although captain of a coal barge, is little changed, and his drinking buddy is Marthy, a floozy. Chris idolizes Anna, and when he learns she is coming to visit following her mother's death, he believes nothing is too good for her. Marthy is first to recognize Anna; she is hardly the girl Chris imagined.
During a fog, an ocean liner is wrecked, and Chris's barge picks up some of the survivors, stokers from the engine room. One of them, Mat Burke (William Russell), is injured, and Anna takes pity on him, to her father's consternation; he fears she will pair off with an unlucky man of the sea little different from himself. By contrast, Anna regards herself as unworthy of Mat; she bemoans not having met him four years earlier. While a storm rages outside the barge's cabin, she tells Mat she loves him but will not marry him. The two men fight, but Anna tells them she is not "furniture," and that relatives treated her and her mother like slaves. She was beaten and worse by the father and his sons, finally dropping her in town with $5 in her pocket to make her own way. Anna tells Mat that he made her feel clean for the first time, but he responds by telling her he'll get drunk until he washes off the stain of her kiss.
Chris stops Anna from drowning herself, and in turn she finds him carrying a gun—he planned to ship out and shoot himself in despair. Mat's, having tried to forget his sorrows in drink, returns to the barge and kneels before Anna, assuring her that if she will swear she never loved another, he could forget the rest. Her affirmation is sufficient. Anna compels the two men to drink to their friendship, for they are sailing out on the same boat.
Despite receiving no unusual promotion, Anna Christie won widespread critical praise. It also proved a sound investment. The movie cost $225,000, with $314,715 net. Today, Anna Christie only survives in a version that was recut for a U.S.S.R. release in 1930 by Evgenii Chvlev, with intertitles recreated by the Museum of Modern Art from a translation and the original play, with restoration by George Eastman House.
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer-prize winning play had premiered two years before, and Ince's production marked the first of his theatrical presentations brought to the screen. Anna Christie is delivered with intensity, sometimes to the point of overacting, but John Griffith Wray's direction avoids any sense of the stage origins. In adapting the play, Bradley King merely rearranged some of the chronology and cut all but the most essential dialogue for intertitles. As one reviewer noted, "The notable success of the picture lies in the fact that it has done precisely what Mr. O'Neill did, in terms of motion pictures. There is no padding, no change of characterization, no tampering with the author's intention. Every scene that enlarges the horizon of the play by virtue of the greater mobility of picture-making is a legitimate expansion of what is suggested by the text.... As far as is humanly possible they have been faithful to the spirit of the play in story, setting and acting." After seeing the movie, O'Neill telegrammed Ince to say, "Your motion picture of Anna Christie is a fine, true representation, faithful to the spirit and intent of the play."
The sea is the motif, and its backgrounds constantly add to the mood, echoing the emotions. The movie opens on atmospheric shots before cutting to the coastal village seldom visited by Anna's father, Chris Christopherson. (The role is played by George F. Marion, who originated the role on Broadway and worked for five weeks at $1,000, then would reprise it in 1930 in the M-G-M remake. ) The 5-year-old Anna plays on the shore, her naiveté with a small boat almost causing her to drown. Simultaneously, her father breaks a doll he had bought for her during a spree in Shanghai. It is a forecast of the years to come. A sailor, he can never save money because of his drinking, and blames "that old devil sea" for all his misfortunes. He arranges for Anna and her mother to live with relatives, believing she will have a life a sailor could not provide.
Fifteen years later, Chris, although captain of a coal barge, is little changed, and his drinking buddy is Marthy, a floozy. Chris idolizes Anna, and when he learns she is coming to visit following her mother's death, he believes nothing is too good for her. Marthy is first to recognize Anna; she is hardly the girl Chris imagined.
During a fog, an ocean liner is wrecked, and Chris's barge picks up some of the survivors, stokers from the engine room. One of them, Mat Burke (William Russell), is injured, and Anna takes pity on him, to her father's consternation; he fears she will pair off with an unlucky man of the sea little different from himself. By contrast, Anna regards herself as unworthy of Mat; she bemoans not having met him four years earlier. While a storm rages outside the barge's cabin, she tells Mat she loves him but will not marry him. The two men fight, but Anna tells them she is not "furniture," and that relatives treated her and her mother like slaves. She was beaten and worse by the father and his sons, finally dropping her in town with $5 in her pocket to make her own way. Anna tells Mat that he made her feel clean for the first time, but he responds by telling her he'll get drunk until he washes off the stain of her kiss.
Chris stops Anna from drowning herself, and in turn she finds him carrying a gun—he planned to ship out and shoot himself in despair. Mat's, having tried to forget his sorrows in drink, returns to the barge and kneels before Anna, assuring her that if she will swear she never loved another, he could forget the rest. Her affirmation is sufficient. Anna compels the two men to drink to their friendship, for they are sailing out on the same boat.
Despite receiving no unusual promotion, Anna Christie won widespread critical praise. It also proved a sound investment. The movie cost $225,000, with $314,715 net. Today, Anna Christie only survives in a version that was recut for a U.S.S.R. release in 1930 by Evgenii Chvlev, with intertitles recreated by the Museum of Modern Art from a translation and the original play, with restoration by George Eastman House.