Thread by @lainasparetime

Alright, it's time for our fourth and final thread on the 1934 Anne of Green Gable movie. Y'all ready? #LainaWatchesAnne

#LainaWatchesAnne So when last we left Anne, she'd almost drowned and then decided to forgive Gilbert Blythe because he saved her life and the movie basically forgot the book existed. We also learned a year had passed since the hayride. The time passage was SUPER clear.

#LainaWatchesAnne By the way, we're a bit over an hour into the movie, which is an hour and eighteen minutes long. Are you... sensing a problem here?

#LainaWatchesAnne So apparently the tree Anne hung off to not die has become Anne and Gilbert's meeting spot. Near drowning IS so romantic... okay, Anne would actually find that exciting XD

#LainaWatchesAnne I mean, if she was reading it in a book. She didn't find it very fun when it happened to her.

#LainaWatchesAnne It's now spring or summer and - what happened to Anne's hair?? The green dye scene isn't in this so why'd she cut it?

#LainaWatchesAnne Okay so they don't want Marilla to find out about all this, Gilbert gives Anne a locket "guaranteed not to turn green", and then he puts her in a headlock.

#LainaWatchesAnne Aaaand now it's winter again and I don't understand the timeline of this movie. Seriously like we went through a full set of seasons in like a minute and a half?

Anne gives Gilbert some socks for his birthday while Mrs Barry spies on them from the trees.

#LainaWatchesAnne This is so cheesy. Gilbert calls her sweetheart and she says she's been wanting him to do so for three years.

Wait, three years??? So Anne is 17? Sooooo technically we're now actually older than Anne is in the book by the end. Sure. Why not.

#LainaWatchesAnne They share a very Hayes Code kiss and Mrs Barry makes this face, which, same.

Also you can see how well hidden she is.

#LainaWatchesAnne So we transition with a sidewipe. There's been mostly fade-to-blacks for scene changes and it's honestly very random when they use a wipe instead. There's no rhyme nor reason.

#LainaWatchesAnne Oh, hey, Marilla. Haven't seen you in a couple years. Mrs Barry completely ratted Anne out and Marilla is ranting at Matthew, who doesn't care. He's apparently known all along.

He also makes this face. Ew.

#LainaWatchesAnne Seriously, Marilla's mad and the dialogue is bad. Marilla wouldn't call Anne an "ingrate". Especially not now, not years into their relationship.

#LainaWatchesAnne The worst she does by the same point, basically, if not even earlier, is say "her head is full of nonsense" and even then she says good things about Anne at the same time and feels kind of bad about it,

#LainaWatchesAnne OHHHHH Anne is wearing like Leia buns, okay. Sorry, the film quality is obviously not the best here and it's hard to see details sometimes.

#LainaWatchesAnne I'm not sure the movie really gets that wearing her hair up is a sign of adulthood.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla says, "You know what we think of Gilbert Blythe" which - does Anne really? She only found out this stuff because of Diana. Marilla should have no reason to believe Anne knows all the history.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne runs off crying because she has like no backbone or spit and fire in this.

And seriously this hairstyle is odd. I'll go into this more at another point.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla comes into Anne's room to talk to her and this is the moment in my first watch I realized I had to keep track of Anne Shirley's murder faces.

She wants your soul, Twitter.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla makes Anne promise not to see Gilbert again. Apparently that tree is right on the property line of the Blythe and Cuthbert properties which.... fine. Okay, movie. If you want them to be neighbours for no real reason, why not.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla tell Gilbert when telling him to stay away from Anne that Anne has "ambitions to make something of herself". We have not seen any evidence of this in the movie, however.

And says that she's going to... "normal school"??

#LainaWatchesAnne There's no subtitles on this so I must be hearing that wrong.

Gilbert writes her a whiny letter. I don't read handwriting super well and couldn't pause on my first viewing, and I seriously thought Anne wrote him a Dear John letter. That would have been funnier

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne wants to try to see him but he's already gone for... school? Ngl I kind of forgot to make a note and I don't care to go back. But my God I can't tell you how much this timeline jumps around. I'm at an hour and six minutes!

This all happened in 5 minutes!

#LainaWatchesAnne And now Anne is apparently leaving. Marilla asks Matthew, "What gave you the idea her schooling was going to pinch us?" Which he denies saying and I am honestly so confused.

"Fine thing that'd be for Anne to get wind of," she says. Ooookay.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne doesn't let Matthew drive her to the train station, so she doesn't cry saying goodbye in front of people which really misses an opportunity to have a book-ended shot of him seeing her off like he picked her up.

Seriously how sweet would that be???

#LainaWatchesAnne They say goodbye, we get a shot that perhaps hasn't aged the way they meant, and she kisses Matthew on the cheek, thank God.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla makes this face, and says the line about wishing Anne had stayed little forever, and despite the rest of the movie, it's still really good.

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla's actress having her clearly fighting not to break down is great. They again give her one of Matthew's lines, but she's so great. Just a glimmer of tears in her eyes and still prickly.

#LainaWatchesAnne Honestly, full kudos to the actress, because they really don't give her as much character development so she hasn't softened quite as much as book Marilla eventually does, but I really like what she does anyways.

#LainaWatchesAnne Okay, no, Anne gets a letter and it totally was normal school. Not a term I'd heard before. And I don't get why they changed Queen's Academy to "Queen's Normal School". That's not a real place either.

#LainaWatchesAnne Normal school was also a term for this type of school, but it kind of seems to me like it was a little less common of a term in Canada, especially for Anne's time period. Just an odd change. Maybe done to help people in the 30s understand it better?

#LainaWatchesAnne We learn of this change through a letter that says it's from "Diana Barry Roberts" because that's right, Diana got married! And didn't invite her best friend, but that's cool!

She even only writes her after the fact.

#LainaWatchesAnne I have no words.

Also apparently Anne is going to school in the 1930s because seriously, this is not period accurate at all. Outfit, hair, none of it.

#LainaWatchesAnne Diana comes to visit Anne at school and it's underwhelming since we literally haven't seen her in like an hour and years of movie time. She just disappeared.

#LainaWatchesAnne Diana says Gilbert is studying medicine, blah blah blah, and then she just drops it on Anne that Matthew's sick. She assumed Anne knew.

#LainaWatchesAnne It's two weeks til finals and Anne is going to blow them off to rush home. Nice way to say thanks for paying for school.

So we greenscreen our way back to Green Gables.

#LainaWatchesAnne The doctor is there and acts like he knows Anne even though the croup scene never happened and we've never seen him before. He says Matthew is too weak to see Anne.

#LainaWatchesAnne He also says Matthew and Marilla have pretty much gone broke sending Anne to school and can't afford to bring in a specialist. Apparently even the house is mortgaged. Expensive school she just blew off.

#LainaWatchesAnne The "best man in Canada" is in Nova Scotia and Gilbert Blythe just HAPPENS to be studying under him.

It's an hour and fifteen minutes in, by the way. The movie has THREE MINUTES left.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne goes to see Gilbert, blah blah blah. Gilbert does this and Anne looks dead inside.

#LainaWatchesAnne I'm also dead inside by this point, so that's cool.

#LainaWatchesAnne The fancy doctor has already left for Green Gables and really this movie as no sense of travel time. Or... Gilbert already sent for him? Yeah that I guess? I guess Gilbert sent for him yesterday and he's driving by as they look out the window.

#LainaWatchesAnne I want to be clear the movie is confused, not me. Well, I'm confused too, but the movie is very unclear about where we even are right now. I GUESS Gilbert is back in Avonlea?

Look I also don't care at this point, tbh. There's 2 minutes left and I taste freedom

#LainaWatchesAnne So the doctor cures Matthew! Because he had some disease that only one guy could cure, apparently. We literally never get an answer on that one.

But Matthew lives!

Okay, then.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne goes in to see him. Matthew says Gilbert is a "fine young man" and Marilla bristles but doesn't say anything.

#LainaWatchesAnne Matthew: "He might've been my boy, once." And then you'd be siblings, Anne. Or he'd be your uncle? Either way, we're talking some real VC Andrews action here, Anne.

#LainaWatchesAnne Also what part of Matthew's body is Anne's head on????

#LainaWatchesAnne Marilla goes to get Gilbert, apparently having forgiven him, and we are done.

FREEDOM

#LainaWatchesAnne Okay. I think it's pretty clear what my feelings are her, but I want to bring in Montgomery's quote about this movie.

#LainaWatchesAnne She... was not a huge fan. “On the whole it is not a bad picture. At least the first two thirds. The last third is a silly sentimental commonplace end tacked on for the sake of rounding it up as a love story”

#LainaWatchesAnne I honestly agreed. I think my biggest problem is they didn't seem to want to make an Anne of Green Gables movie. They wanted to make a romance with Anne of Green Gables as the backdrop.

#LainaWatchesAnne Shirley is fine, but she's not gonna be on my list of favourite Annes. Aging her up so much is a change I really don't like, and she doesn't have enough spunk. She really doesn't get into that many scrapes or adventures.

#LainaWatchesAnne On the whole, I thought Shirley was just a little too sweet and nice. She doesn't embody how much of a temper Anne can have, or how much of a grudge she can hold. It's a very lightened, smoothed over version of Anne.

#LainaWatchesAnne The movie also chose to cut out SO many events like Diana getting drunk (probably for Hayes Code reasons), Minnie May's croup, anything with Aunt Josephine, any female character but Diana, especially Miss Stacy and Mrs Allan, and just so many important things.

#LainaWatchesAnne Especially the lack of female relationships bothered me. Anne's friendships with girls are incredibly important to her, and Marilla and Mrs Rachel and Miss Stacy and Mrs Allan are all role models she looks up to.

#LainaWatchesAnne They hit a handful of the major plot points, but they didn't seem to understand why they were doing so. It felt very obligatory, like "here are the things we have to do to get to the romance".

#LainaWatchesAnne And clearly the romance was added to like 800 times over. Besides that just being kind of annoying and not true to the book, it leaves no room for character growth or any other relationship besides the Anne/Gilbert one.

#LainaWatchesAnne Luce said that it would have been better to have fewer events but go more in depth, and I agree. The pacing is just strange and not good.

#LainaWatchesAnne I applaud this movie for its historical significance of being the earliest Anne of Green Gables movie that can be seen in its entirety, and also honestly for the greenscreen effects which were pretty state of the art for the time period.

#LainaWatchesAnne It was an interesting experience, and fun because I dragged @soveryqueer along for the ride with me :P But I am not a big fan of this one.

#LainaWatchesAnne Also I'm just gonna leave it out there that this took me like 2 weeks to do so if you enjoyed it, maybe drop a little something something in the tip jar and please RT and like comment subscribe and all that jazz :P

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