Part of me wants to look through Garbo's catalog to see what roles she played. In the last few Garbo movies I've watched, she was a courtesan, an erotic dancer, and in this one, she's a prostitute. Did she ever play a scientist or a school teacher? Must she always play "indecent" and castoff women?
When Anna's (Garbo) mother died, she was only 5, and her father, a sailor from a long line of sailors, decided that she should stay with relatives in Minnesota. They were good farm people, he said, and if we are to believe him, he thought she would be much better off living on the Minnesota farm than with him on the sea. He's a sailor and doesn't think much of his profession and the lifestyle of sailors. His one hope is her, that she will marry a farmer and escape the fate of being attached to a sailor.
Now 20, Anna meets her father for the first time in 15 years. Her life on the farm wasn't everything her father imagined. She was forced to flee the farm, going to the big city of St. Paul. In order to survive, she would become a prostitute. Martha (Marie Dreiser) talks with Anna at the bar as they wait for her father to return. She immediately recognizes that Anna had worked as a prostitute. How? Martha originally claims that "at least I never walked the streets," but if she was never a prostitute herself, the idea is still there that's she's an "indecent" woman and so she can sense the indecency in Anna.
In any event, Chris (George Marion), is happy to be reunited with his daughter and invites her to rest and live with him on his coal barge. Anna seems initially hesitant -- a coal barge must be dirty, and life on the open sea must be miserable -- but she quickly agrees. She has no real alternative.
This is how the film opens, and at this point, I'm interested in what will happen. The German version seems more natural, and I like the supporting cast a bit more than their counterparts in the English version. It was in the English version that I found myself less interested in the plot once things shift from the bar to the barge. Would I feel the same way about the plot in the German version?
Actually, as most reviewers seem to agree, the German version is much better. Same story, but better director, better actors (or, in the case of Garbo, more natural deliver in German rather than English). The only downside to the German version: It's not been as well preserved. A lot of very dark scenes, and at the end, the film almost feels "spliced" together in the final few minutes.
But I watched the German version all the way through and never grew tired of the plot. When I watch the English version, my mind drifted, and I had a hard time staying focused, even immediately forgetting how the story ended immediately after finishing the film.
So how does the movie end? It's a marginally happy ending. Both her father and Matt (Charles Bickford) have decided to sign up for a ship assignment that will take them to the farthest ends of the Earth -- the father because he feels guilty, and Matt, because he still loves Anna.
For a moment, Chris considers suicide, and Matt comes back to perhaps rape, perhaps murder, Anna. None of that nasty stuff happens. In fact, the three of them eventually plan out a life together after this final voyage. That's what makes it a marginally happy ending. I use the word "marginally." because when the film ends, I had my doubts that they would go through with the plan. Anything could happen on a long ship voyage, and including Chris's death and Matt's visiting women in ports... who knows? And would Chris and Matt really be content living a quiet life on land?
As I noted above, Garbo always seems to be playing "indecent" women. When Matt first meets her, he assumes she must be one, but when he learns that she's Chris's daughter, he apologies, and then he there on out assumes she's decent and clean, until Anna finally admits otherwise.
Of course only women are decent or indent. Men like Chris and Matt, sailors, may be marginally indecent and even recognize that much about themselves -- they drink, they womanize -- but they hold it against "whores" a lot more than they do against themselves. A "whore" is always a "whore." She cannot "change." Men, on the other hand, can change? Why can men go to a whorehouse and think that's okay, but then still judge the "whores" who work there?
Anna tries to explain to Matt, for example, that she's never been in love before. She never loved any of the male clients she was with. Matt, you would think, could understand that, as he assumedly never loved any of the women in port he has been with. But her confession about her past is too much for him to take, and it's like the veil of decency was immediately removed once she admitted her past.
That's what makes this ending so interesting. The film is pre-Code, and so I guess this is why we're allowed the "happy ending."
But left's step back a bit. What happened in St. Paul? Anna started out there as a nursemaid, and she indicated that she had plenty of men interested in her. Was she not interested in any of them? How did she end up living in "the House"? We learn that she's her own woman, and if Matt judges her for her past, Anna judges herself, too, but more importantly she judges "all men" for being the same. So Matt has his blind spot, and so does Anna.
Overall, I like the German version a lot more. The story is still dated and hard to stomach at times for that reason, but as a movie, it just works so much better. In the English version, the director even used place cards three times to provide unnecessary "written transitions" early in the film. The German version doesn't use any, and the director has a better since of movement in the shooting of the scenes. I'm sure those big, bulky cameras were difficult to move but even moving them slightly to the left or the right a few inches helped the German version. In the English version, there's even one early scene in the bar when Marthy leaves her table to join Anna, and the camera lags, showing Martha's empty table for 4 or 5 seconds before finally switching to Anna's table... just stuff like that really bugged me about the English version...
Rating: 3.5/5
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