Anna Christie

The first film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, this silent version stars Blanche Sweet as Anna Christie, a young woman raised by relatives after her father, a Swedish coal barge captain, abandoned her. When she reunites with her father on his barge, she falls for a rough-hewn sailor, Matt Burke, but cannot be honest with either man about the life she led before finding them. Produced by Thomas H. Ince, who paid $100,000 for the stage rights, and directed by John Griffith Wray, the film was considered lost for decades until Blanche Sweet herself helped locate a print with Russian intertitles in a Soviet archive. O'Neill, who was famously difficult about adaptations of his work, cited this silent version as the best film made from his writing. George F. Marion recreated his stage role as Anna's father. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.