Willie Krischke

While it's still a bit of a stretch, the people feel more real here than in Sunrise - Murnau is still playing with types, but they feel a little more lived in. It's pretty straightforward, as far as I could tell, in terms of camera work and composition. I don't see anything particularly "visually arresting" about it. Mostly centered compositions at mid-range, with some cuts to close-ups. Pretty workmanlike stuff. Murnau has a talent for telling the story without title cards, and while they never feel cluttered here, there were a few I thought he could do without. The lead actor looks a bit like Jason Clarke. His father could be James Cromwell. I really liked the casting and acting of the harvesters. They seemed like real roughnecks, not actors. Some pretty ugly and rough looking dudes. Gave the scenes with them and the girl a real sense of menace. It's a perfectly fine film, nothing special, but not drivel either. Simple and straightforward.

Greta Garbo is world-weary, tough, and sick of men, and maybe of life. Sad, sad, sad. That might be the role of course; Anna Christie carries the weight of her past with her all the time. George F. Marion, who plays her father, looks like Fred Armisen. Marie Dressler is fantastic as the drunk old woman. I don’t think I’ve seen any other early sound film with this many accents. The sound quality is not great, they talk with that super-fast diction of early films, and the result is… a lot of it is unintelligible. Not impressed with her big scene. She’s too busy “acting.” Not a great performance. Her best scenes aren’t the barn burners, they’re the ones when she’s not doing much but looking sad and tired.