Anna Karenina (1935)

Anna Karenina

Another Greta Garbo great! Fredrick March and Freddie Bartholomew are equally as great. Greta Garbo plays doomed Anna Karenina. Bored with her cold husband she turns her attention to Count Vronsky she eventually runs away with him. Her powerful husband makes her choose between her lover and her child. Her choice dooms her in the end. November 25, 2007

Overated missed opportunity

In the Garbo canon, this film surely must rate as the biggest missed opportunity of her career. All the ingredients should have contributed to a memorable film but after a good start, it just doesn't happen.

Maybe it is the short running time. A sweeping novel has been understandably truncated but Anna's relationship with Vronsky is not sufficiently developed so their passion is unconvincing. A number of scenes don't lead anywhere e.g. Kitty's marriage scene.

Maybe it's the cast. Basil Rathbone as her husband rises to Garbo's level, superbly generating some sympathy within a stern and cold character and Reginald Owen is excellent as her brother. Freddie Bartholomew is awful with his acting school diction and delivery. Fredric March starts well, dashing and magnetic, but becomes mechanical and unconvincing as the film develops. Maureen O'Sullivan, no one's idea of a Russian or Garbo's sister, overacts in a simpering and cloying manner.

Maybe it's the script and direction. The first 20 minutes are by far the best with a terrific scene when March and his colleagues drink and eat and as the film moves to the memorable introduction of Garbo through the steam of a train and shows her empathy and warmth as she deals with her errant brother. From there, it is a gradual downhill slide plodding along lugubriously and generating little passion. It is as if everyone ran out of interest, even Garbo.

Maybe it was the censorship which caused so many of these problems. Anna Karenina is an adulteress so it is likely that any scenes of real passion would have been curtailed.

The print of the film has not been restored and is dirty with white lines appearing often. At least one scene is missing as noted by another reviewer and there are no extras except the original trailer. Unless the film is purchased as part of one of the Garbo collections, it is not good value. June 29, 2007

a classics illustrated comic book would give you a better impression of tolstoy

garbo is radiant but there is no other reason to watch this highly abridged telling of tolstoys novel. while im used to hollywood (by necessityt) removing whole sections of a loooong book, this is incomprehensible to anyone who hasnt some previous acquaintance with the story. even the usually reliable fredric march and basil rathbone (one of the greatest hams ever) cant save it.
March 21, 2007

Love in an Age of Appearances

As I plow my way through this Great Garbo Signature Collection a few things are becoming somewhat apparent. One, as Garbo got older she grew into her beauty and out of that ghostly look she had in his early films. And two, she is a movie star not a serious actress. As a result this adaptation of "Anna Karenina" is much more a Garbo vehicle than a serious take on a serious piece of Russian literature. Like most of her film entrances this one is marked by an extreme close up, lighting that is way too bright, and actual fanfare that today would just seem silly. The main problem I had was that it was just not very literary. The vocab is at a second grade reading level and the ideas are bold and unambiguous. The book and even the movie are old old old so I will forgive the story for feeling familiar, and you have to appreciate the message they are trying to spread. Here we have Anna, who fought for love, but was crushed under an avalanche of honor and careers, and who died for the sins of the men in her life.

The first 30 minutes of the film are a waste (sorry, sacrifice) as we visit an upscale party where Anna meets Count Vronsky (Fredric March). We get so much dancing and costuming that I started having flashbacks to "Marie Antoinette". From there the film turns its attention to the role of adultery and the repressive nature of marriage. Anna and Vronsky are besotted, but Anna is married to Karenin, a tough military type who marches around all day scolding her for spoiling their (obnoxious) son. He doesn't really care if she loves him or not, just so long as she stays with him so that they can keep up appearances. She eventually caves to passion and he resorts to the old "Your mother is dead," trick to explain her absence to their son. The film takes a stand against all things that are rotten about our dealings with relationships. Marriage is presented as an evil force that is thrust upon us to quash free love, free sex, and freedom. The rules are blasted for being arbitrary and the fact that sometimes there is a better option out there than marriage is stated. Those who sit around all day imploring others to focus on their careers are dismissed as stuffy bougie folk with nothing better to do. Of course there is a lot of Hollywood hokum mixed in here, what with the rousing tale of how you should crawl out from under your oppressors boot and find true happiness, but still this movie rocks philosophically.

Soon after running off together Anna and Vronsky realize that there is a difference between love making and love maintaining. Her son beckons her and the Serbian/Turkish War beckons him. These desires dominate their lives until the film moves towards a decent climax and the anti-climatic resolution. I would also like to say that in light of the Barbaro tragedy the horse racing scene is especially tough to watch. Not so much for the image of a horse being euthanized, but for those that involved real horses taking truly scary tumbles. This film may depict old school Russia but the message is still relevant. We are all too eager to slap on the shackles of jobs and relationships just so that we can bemoan the ball and chain. And the sooner we realize that our government is squarely on the side of Karenin, the better off we will be. **3/4 March 3, 2007

Garbo fails to convince here.

First off, let us concede that neither the 1935 Greta Garbo "Anna Karenina" nor the 1948 Vivian Leigh version comes close to capturing the complexities of Tolstoy's masterpiece. Most significantly, Konstantin Levin and Kitty's relationship, and more particularly, Levin's protracted personal and metaphysical development, are dropped entirely, both screenplays preferring to treat the story as an adulterous romantic triangle with snowflakes instead of palm trees.

That said, what we are left with in both films are masterpieces of film craftsmanship, where the triple triumphs of cinematography, art direction, and costume design are the real stars.

Which is not in any way to lessen the contributions of the cast, who in both instances, make the best of what they have to work with.

Garbo enchants in many of her individual scenes, particularly with Freddy Bartholomew and Maureen O'Sullivan, (as Kitty). Who can forget her advising Kitty to seize her fleeting youth, with its promise of a dream prince to emerge from the blue haze of the mountain top. Equally impressive, is her muted aversion to Alexei Karenin, (Basil Rathbone).

But she fails in her depiction of a fatal love for Count Vronsky (Frederic March). Garbo, with her solemn, majestic and singular self possession--her "Queen Christina" like cerebral detachment, is simply too thoughtful, too deliberate, to in any way convey Tolstoy's impulsive, febrile and thoughtless anti-heroine.

True, she had forsaken all for John Gilbert in "Christina," but that decision was the result of deep and thorough soul searching, and explained with the eloquence of Solomon to her courtiers. In "Camille" she is by profession a lover, and so her ultimate renunciation of Armand, reveals the true depth of her character. But one cannot conceive of her destroying the lives of others to satisfy a whimsical infatuation.

And this is where Miss Leigh's Anna trumps Garbo, for Miss Leigh does successfully transmit Anna's neurasthenic and utterly reckless collapse at the feet of the dashing Count. She seems blown by forces much stronger than she--a daffodil in a windstorm, and light years from Garbo's deep Scandanavian imperturbability.

Given the alleged similarities between Miss Leigh and Anna's disposition, perhaps this is life imitating art. In any case, it is why she makes a truer Anna, and why the role serves as a warm up for Blanche Dubois...

She is also abetted in her interpretation, by the genuinely eerie, recurring, nightmare sequence--with the Charon like, white bearded old man, forever dogging her as he chinks away at the ice. An ill omen indeed ! And Miss Leigh conveys the desperation of her impending doom in every gesture and nuance.

Then too Keiron Moore, (despite being an inferior actor to Frederic March) is much more dashing and handsome as Vronsky--a fact which, at least in terms of audience sympathy, helps explain the attraction.

Strangely, Mr. March who had been so visually appealing as Dr. Jeckyll, just a few years earlier, photographs very poorly in the Garbo version, and is not helped by a buzz haircut.

And as superb as Cedric Gibbons sets and Adrian's costumes are as a backdrop for Garbo, we feel Mr.Andrejew's art direction and Cecil Beaton's designs get the nod here as well, if only perhaps in their European origin, and the deep, appropriately moody nineteenth century shadows with which they are lit and photographed.

However, as visually sumptuous cinematic recreations of a vanished aristocratic world--each version has much to savor, and should be taken in tandem.


February 18, 2007

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