Anna Karenina (1935)
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Movie Reviews of Anna Karenina (1935)
Movie Review: Anna Karenina
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: Worth it just to see Garbo
Summary: 4 Stars
No one expects a film to accurately represent a Tolstoy novel, so it's best just to take it on its own merits, and enjoy it. However it really should have been longer than it was. That would have made the romance between Anna and Vronsky more believable as well as the eventual demise of their passion. Here it all happens so quickly that we almost don't get enough time to fully engage with the characters.
Garbo makes it all worthwhile, though. She is stunningly magnificent here -- I think more beautiful than in many of her other films. Besides her very lovely physical beauty, her charm and naturalness, especially in the early scenes with her family, are winning. No wonder Vronksy fell in love with her at first sight.
Casting Frederich March as Vronsky seems like a mistake to me, but perhaps he was considered a heart-throb at the time. To my eyes, he is stiff, a bit pudgy and just not very attractive. Perhaps if more time had been given to the buildup of the romance we might have seen what Anna saw in him, but here we just have to take it on faith. Basil Rathbone, as the passionless husband, actually stirred up more excitement, although in a negative way. His scene with their son, Sergei, (Freddie Bartholomew) was quite moving.
I loved the opening scene of the fantastic banquet and the drinking contest, also the ball, (the Mazurka was wonderful), and the opera was a hoot! The scenes at the train station, in the snow, are appropriately chilling. So much drama has happened on European trains in those wonderful old stations. The settings and costumes are all splendid.
I think that, for me, the enjoyment of the film rests in the wonderful sets and the sight of the magnificent Garbo. We all know the story, so it was just a matter of seeing it unfold....here, rather abruptly.
Movie Review: A SCENE IS MISSING FROM THE 4 Stars
I am a huge fan of Greta Garbo, and I have seen all her movies more than once. I recently bought her Signature DVD collection and I was very happy to own it finally. I was watching "Anna Karenina" on the other day on DVD and I found out that a scene is missing from the movie. In that scene Greta Garbo's character Anna is with Frederic March's character Vronsky in Venice riding a gondola. Then, all of a sudden, a little boy comes to them and shows some tricks and Anna becomes very pleased to see him because he reminded her of her own son. She throws some coins to him. The missing scene is actually a part of this scene. That same boy brings all his friends from his neighborhood and they are all starting to do the same tricks as he was doing to get more coins. The whole scene takes approximately 5 minutes.First, I thought that my DVD might have been defected, but I was so determined to find out that I actually bought another DVD just to prove myself that it is not defected. The production did skip that scene from the DVD. In May I went to see this movie on a big screen at UCLA and the scene was there. So if you are a picky person like me I would not recommend you to buy this DVD till the Warner Brothers will correct that mistake.
Movie Review: Lavish Production and Great Photography
Summary: 3 Stars
"Anna Karenina" is a 1935 film based on a Leon Tolstoy novel. Tolstoy published the novel in serialized form from 1873 to 1877, and it's said to be a rendering of the true life story of Maria Hartung, the eldest daughter of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Many critics consider the 800+ page novel one of the top 10 ever written.
The novel first appeared in operas and plays beginning in the early 1900s. The first film adaptation was "Love", a 1927 silent film starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Garbo had been in nearly 20 silent films, starting as early as 1920. Her best known silent film prior to "Love" was "Flesh and the Devil" (1926) which was directed by Clarence Brown. She was nominated 3 times for an Oscar ("Anna Christie", "Camille", and "Ninotchka") but never won. She is listed #5 on the AFI's list of Greatest Actresses.
The great Frederic March co-stars as Garbo's lover. March won an Oscar for "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931) and "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), and earned three more nominations. He won the Golden Globe for "Death of a Salesman" (1951) and earned two more nominations. He won two Tonys ("Years Ago" and "Long Days Journey Into Night"). He appeared in more than 50 films between 1921 and 1973. Personally I think his best performance was as Matthew Brady in "Inherit the Wind" (1960). He claimed he wasn't "overwhelmed" by Garbo's beauty and thought that "women were more attracted to her than men." March does an excellent job min this film. He looks like a younger brother to John Barrymore.
Suave Basil Rathbone plays Garbo's husband. No one has ever been better at playing the villain or the rouge than Rathbone. His performances in "David Copperfield" (1935), "Captain Blood" (1935), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1935), "Robin Hood" (1938), "Tower of London" (1939), and "The Mark of Zorro" (1940) are classic. He was twice nominated for an Oscar ("Romeo and Juliet" and "If I Were King"). He's probably best remembered as the heroic Sherlock Holmes in the 14 films he made between 1939 and 1946. Rathbone gives a sympathetic performance as Garbo's cuckolded husband.
The beautiful Maureen O'Sullivan is best remembered as Tarzan's Jane. She played Jane 6 times between 1932 and 1942, but she played many other roles during that time, including "Tugboat Annie" (1933), "The Thin Man" (1934), "Cardinal Richelieu" (1935), "A Day at the Races" (1937), "A Yank at Oxford" (1938), and "Pride and Prejudice" (1940). She slowed down in the 40s to devote time to her husband and 7 children, one of whom is the actress Mia Farrow. O'Sullivan plays Garbo's sister and does a sweet job in the little time she has on screen.
Freddie Bartholomew plays Garbo's son. Freddie was one of the most famous child actors of the 1930s, appearing in "David Copperfield" (1935), "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (1`936), "Captains Courageous" (1937) and "Kidnapped" (1938). Freddie gives his usual endearing performance.
Reginald Owen plays Prince Stiva, Garbo's brother. Owen was a distinguished actor who appeared in over 100 films including playing Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" (1938), Admiral Boom in "Mary Poppins" (1964) and General Teagler in "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1972). He had the distinction of playing both Sherlock Holmes ("A study in Scarlet") and Dr. Watson ("Sherlock Holmes") and played King Louis XV in 3 different films. Own does his usual credible job.
Clarence Brown directs. Brown was a well known silent film director ("Last of the Mohicans", "Flesh and the Devil"). He was nominated for an Oscar 5 times ("Anna Christie", "A Free Soul", "The Human Comedy", "National Velvet", and "The Yearling") but never won. His films earned 38 Oscar nominations and 9 wins, but never for Director. This was his third film with Garbo and they would work together on three more films. He loved working with actresses, and also worked with Joan Crawford 6 times. The film tends to drag at times, and at other times the pacing is uneven. Scenes appear that are hours and then months apart, with no apparent rationale.
Williams Daniels is the cinematographer. Garbo insisted he shoot all her films, which he did, except for 2 ("Conquest", "Two-faced Woman") which turned out to be flops at the box office. When not working with Garbo, Daniels was a favorite of Erich von Stroheim, who was Garbo's favorite director (even though she made 6 films with Brown). Daniels lensed more than 150 films. He was nominated 3 times ("Anna Christie", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "How the West was Won") and won once ("Naked City" in 1948). Daniels' photography is exceptional. It's one of the best parts of the film.
David Selznick produced for MGM. Selznick is best remembered for "Gone with the Wind" (1939), but he was nominated for 8 other Oscars for films as diverse as "Viva Villa" (1934), "David Copperfield" (1935), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1936), "A Star is Born" (1937), "Rebecca" (1940) and "Spellbound" (1945). Beyond these, he was also involved in one capacity or another in such classics as "A Farewell to Arms" (1957) and "The Third Man" (1949) among the nearly 90 films he produced. The production values in this film are excellent. One can feel the opulence.
Garbo won Best Actress from the New York Film Critics and Brown won Best Foreign Film at the Venice Film festival. There were no Oscar nominations. The NY Times called the film "ably produced and comparatively mature" and said that "Basil Rathbone is excellent as the husband and there are good performances by Reginald Owen, O'Sullivan and Phoebe Foster."
The film is certainly worth viewing for the photography, the lavish settings, and the generally good acting. I think Garbo's performance is the weakest, and that's a problem when she is in almost every scene, but everyone else does an exceptional job.
Movie Review: Garbo fails to convince here.
Summary: 3 Stars
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.