Anne of Green Gables

by Ethan Cole
 
 

When you are a kid and you see your first black and white movie, you develop a sensibility for the comfort, the culture, and the quality of long-standing oldies but goodies. In the same respect, when you see as one of your first films or read as one of your first books "Anne of Green Gables," you establish an understanding of and appreciation for the classics—that you nourish and develop your whole life...returning to visit "Anne of Green Gables" and getting that same blast of wonder and delight that you did the very first time.

Though I was a devoted reader who read about a book a day, my first experience with "Anne of Green Gables" was by way of the 1934 version. The whole concept of the lost, forlorn, and/or orphaned kid who is taken in was always a fascinating thing for me, and the premise of "Anne of Green Gables" was no exception: A farmer (Matthew Cuthbert, played by O.P. Heggie) and his sister (Marilla Cuthbert, played by Helen Westley) need a farmhand, and though they anticipate, of course, a boy, they willingly take in the orphaned Anne Shirley (played by Dawn O’Day—who changes her stage name to Anne Shirley after playing this role!).
 

Anne, of Green Gables, is not precocious or vengeful or plagued with memories of abuse, but is instead a bright, attentive, curious young girl who goes through the very basest of cultural experiences—from praying to learning to take tea as an invited guest, etc.. She also “teaches” her new surrogates and their neighbors the delights of childlike ways, those which include for Anne of Green Gables imaginative, creative, day-dreamy and positive ways of thinking, doing, and being.

The book, Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (who also wrote "Anne of Avonlea," "Anne of the Island," "Anne’s House of Dreams," and "The Golden Road"), can be read in full on such literature sites as Literature.org or at Project Gutenberg. If you prefer to have your child see the movie, check out the “original” version, from 1934, directed by George Nichols, Jr, and with the screenplay adapted by Sam Mintz. Then you can branch out to the musical version of “Anne of Green Gables” (the 1956 TV version written by James Costigan and Donald Harron and directed by Donald Harron), or can even go to the silent filmic (and comedic) version made in 1919—directed by William Desmond Taylor and written, thankfully, by Lucy Maud Montgomery with Frances Marion.

Whichever way you go—film or lit—may you also feel the nostalgia of the childhood movies and books as they were first intended...to delight, to entertain, and to stay with us for whole lifetimes.