Garbo had retired long before I became a cinema-goer but I heard about her all my life and eventually I caught the odd performance - Queen Christina and Grand Hotel spring to mind - on TV and saw for myself what all the fuss was about. As a Billy Wilder fan I watched Ninotchka over and over but that was about it until this week when I bought a boxed set of six of her talkies. This, of course, was the first one, produced right at the dawn of Sound in 1930 with all the attendant problems connected with new technology and yes, it is static and yes, it is an obvious stage play adapted crudely for the screen but above and beyond this is GARBO, a towering presence, the personification of charisma and yes, she does render everything else inconsequential. O'Neill didn't do happy endings so it's not the faithful adaptation of his Pulitzer prize-winner that it might have been but here again Garbo makes that academic.
Review of Anna Christie
