User Reviews

Clarence Brown's Anna Karenina (1935) bears little resemblance to Tolstoy's Russian melodrama. But the discrepancies hardly matter. Garbo is, of course, Anna – a beautiful, congenial and much beloved wife to senior Russian statesman and all around bore, Karenin (Basil Rathbone). And although her virtue is beyond question, speculations begin to mount when Anna takes an interest in a member of the Imperial Guard, Vronsky (Fredric March). The two quickly develop as lovers, a move that places Anna's future with her son, Alexei (Freddie Bartholomew) in peril. You just know this is going to end badly.

Of all the Garbo classics, this film most brilliantly opens up its cinematic space and develops a real flare for storytelling that goes beyond the acting. Brown's initial establishing shot – a lavish tracking over a seemingly endless dinner table decked out for the soldiers – is both impressive and commanding. Ditto for his handling of Anna's exile from her home at the hands of her husband (another marvelous tracking shot) and her fatal final moments on the railway tracks. David O. Selznick personally supervised and produced this spectacular entertainment under the aegis of his MGM contract and the same meticulous attention to detail that would exemplify his own productions by the end of the decade is present here. This is a marvelous film.

Warner's DVD transfer is the second most impressive one in the bunch. A generally clean image with minimal grain, exceptionally fine detail, solid blacks and clean whites greets the consumer. Age related artifacts are present but sufficiently tempered so as not to distract from the presentation. The audio is mono but very nicely balanced and presented at an equitable listening level.

The adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic has been brought to screen more than 20 times so far. There are a lot of interpretations of the novel, a lot of visions of the sad fate of Anna Karenina. They are generally faithful to Tolstoy's novel. The minor changes, entailed in adaptations, are not to be criticized since each director has the right to interpret the content of a novel in an individual fashion. Nevertheless, Clarence Brown's movie with Greta Garbo in the main role is the most powerful of all adaptations made so far.

Before seeing this movie, there are some inevitable pieces of information that one should know about this adaptation of Tolstoy's classic. Greta Garbo was cast as Anna Karenina twice in her life. This movie was, in fact, a remake of the silent film by Edmund Goulding LOVE (1927) where Greta played with John Gilbert, one of the most powerful men in her career and private life. That version, however, had not survived in its popularity in the long run. The producers even made two endings, a sad and a happy one so that cinemas could choose an appropriate one for the needs of their audience. 8 years later, in 1935, Clarence Brown made something entirely different: a movie that really fitted to Greta's talent, a sort of tribute to Tolstoy and Garbo, something that the fans of both waited for.

There are a lot of impressive moments in the movie. From the very beginning, the decorations, the splendor do leave an everlasting impact in the viewer. The first time we see Anna Karenina is when she gets out of the train and her face becomes more and more visible from the steam (technically very well made). Very soon, there is an accident on a railroad station, a kind of prediction of Anna's death. Among other scenes, the moment of her death is particularly moving. Although there is a tragedy, the train moves on... And does the world care...?

Touching moments are something that make the movie worth seeing. Most moments of Anna being with her son, Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew) make the eyes tearful. Greta Garbo here beautifully shows someone who wants to be a good mother and at the same time, someone who desires to be loved and who has the right for personal happiness.

The cast are great, absolutely impressive performances. Except for Greta Garbo who raised the value of most of films she performed in, Basil Rathbone's portrayal of cruel and cold Karenin is really worth your attention. After Greta, he is another SHINING STAR of the movie. Freddie Bartholomew as Sergei is memorable, too. He was 11 when he played in this film and he managed so well. Fredric March, the symbol of the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, did not give his best performance here; however, there are moments where he plays really well.

In spite of some shortcomings of the movie (skipped plot of Kitty and Levin, long scenes or sometimes dated script fitting to its era only - e.g. in Venice Anna Karenina says to Vronsky: "Is there still pain in the world?"), Brown's ANNA KARENINA is a very good film. Although it is 70 years old, it is still a high entertainment, a piece of film art that deserves the attention of today's audience, that deserves being released on DVD.

If you like this genre, this film is really worth seeing. Even if you are not particularly interested in Tolstoy, your pleasure may be reduced to the admiration of real Hollywood elite of the 1930s. WONDERFUL FILM! 9/10!

I know that Greta Garbo had a great mystique surrounding her career. She is considered a great actress--almost legendary. Despite this, I can't help but think when I watch many of her films is that they are often sappy and over-acted. I'm not sure I can blame her, as the public loved her films and the studio forced her to often play the same type roles again and again (either the "super vamp" or the adulteress). Here, as in so many of her films, Garbo just doesn't seem real--more like an old fashioned stage actress who is over-emoting. Again and again, her acting consisted of a pained look and that's about it.

Now as for the story itself, I guess the problem for me is that I never particularly liked this Tolstoy story, as the title character was so selfish and unlikable. While her husband (Basil Rathbone) is a bit stuffy and conventional, he was NOT a bad man. Sure, when she chose to leave her family to run off with her lover (Frederic March) the husband chose to tell her young son that his mother had died--but this was perhaps a lot less cruel than telling the boy she chose to leave. I think the makers of this film try to make you care about Anna and her plight, but I just felt indifferent to her. And, at the end, I was longing for her to end it all.

Now despite all my complaints, I must admit that the film looks gorgeous--like a typical high-budget MGM film--all full of gloss. The direction is lovely, the sets are great and the music is lovely. Too bad I just didn't care! By the way, Garbo also made a silent version of Anna Karenina but oddly MGM chose to entitle it "LOVE".

Two things stand out for me in watching this fine film: Garbo's acting and the way in which the novel was transferred to the screen.

Many American viewers are impervious to Garbo's acting even as they acknowledge her beauty. To the end of her life, despite more than 50 years of residence in this country, Garbo never became Americanized. She remained an anti-social foreigner who appealed mainly to Europeans. Since this approach does not work in the American melting pot, she retired after World War II had deprived her of her European audience.

However, for many intellectuals and artists, whenever she appears on the screen it is as though an inner door has opened to all of European culture: its literature, painting and sculpture, drama, poetry, music, philosophy, architecture – everything. Though certainly no intellectual, Garbo had a profound instinct for the real thing that continues to inspire artists and creative thinkers in this global age of mass media.

The script for this movie is an admirable adaptation of Tolstoy's long, panoramic novel of life among the upper crust in 19th century Russia. There are well-mounted scenes from an officers' banquet, a full-dress ball, a croquet party, a horse race, an Orthodox wedding and a Russian opera. Together with a searching musical score by Herbert Stothart, this sumptuous filmfare communicates volumes in itself.

Foremost among the themes of the novel was the double standard, whereby married men can be openly promiscuous while married women must keep their hanky-panky a secret. Anna attempts to buck this trend through open adultery and loses everything. The inertial forces of society are symbolized in the novel and in the film by the train. The train scenes are very important to the unity of the story and are superbly photographed and abetted by sound effects and musical commentary.

I could go on and on, but for reasons of space limitations must end here by declaring this film to be the best adaptation yet of one of Europe's finest novels. See it!

Not a bad constringed version of Tolstoy's novel, given a grand Hollywood treatment. Garbo is Anna Karenina, married to an orgulous husband (Rathbone) and devoted to her young boy (Bartholemew). Everything in her rather orthodox life goes askew when she meets the Army officer Count Vronsky (March) and they fecklessly fall in love.

She makes a public spectacle of her adoration of the sexy, dashing March, and when her affair becomes obvious to Rathbone it imperils his honor, his career, and the future of their son, so he throws her out to wander the world.

March is in hot water too. Warned to cut out the adultery business, he resigns and joins Garbo in Venice for a lengthy and thoroughly disrespectable honeymoon.

Garbo doesn't mind leaving her husband but the guilt over her willing separation from her son gnaws at her. She begins to snap at March. She accuses him of wanting to get back into the Guards and fight in the Turkish-Serbian War, which in fact he DOES want, but not if it means leaving her. In the end, sufficiently provoked, he joins his friends in the regiment and takes off for the war, intending to return.

This leaves Garbo alone in Petersberg. She broods, becomes depressed, and throws herself under a train.

Garbo is okay. I never found her as beguiling as the paparazzi did. And March is always a competent actor but I never thought of him as having much in the way of dash. (He'd have made a better Karenin.) Freddy Bartholemew does a fine impression of the stiff, cold, slightly cadaverous, but honorable Basil Rathbone character.

It's Rathbone himself who gives the most memorable performance. We've seen him as many villains -- crossing swords with Errol Flynn, as Mr. Murdstone whipping Freddie Bartholemew, the kind of stern autocrat who brings pleasure whenever he goes. We've also seen him as at least a few heroes -- most notably Sherlock Holmes -- but here his character is complex, as complex as his Commanding Officer in "Dawn Patrol", and he carries it off nicely.

This version of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is quite well-done, despite obvious flaws. I did miss the parallel romance of Levin and Kitty, but one can only fit so much into a two-hour film and director Clarence Brown chose to focus on the title character, which isn't exactly surprising. Garbo is wonderful--beautiful, yes, but also strong on the one side and vulnerable on the other...just the way I imagined Anna. Her death scene is profoundly moving, as is the scene between her and her son, Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew). Unfortunately for the film, while all the supporting actors are marvelous, the most important supporting player comes up distressingly short. I cannot for the life of me understand why Anna would leave Basil Rathbone's exciting and strangely attractive Karenin, for Frederic March's commonplace and genuinely boring Vronsky. They needed another actor (Errol Flynn springs to mind) to play the role of Vronsky, who is supposed to be the sort of man a woman would leave her husband, her family, and her entire social existence for. March just isn't all that interesting, and it makes the movie more disappointing than it should have been. Rathbone, on the other hand, is wonderfully repressed, with just enough passion lurking beneath the surface to make the viewer ask the inevitable question: why would anyone leave Basil Rathbone for Frederic March? You get the sense that a simple conversation between husband and wife would have solved all the problems. 9/10 stars for the sheer brilliance of Garbo, Rathbone and supporting cast, with the loss of one star for the forgettable March.

Da, even as a married woman, she was alone, much alone, alone in that Czarist Russia's upper-class gilded cage locked up by a highly respectable -though annoyingly sanctimonious at times- diplomat Alexei Karenin played by pre-Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone. Being a loving mother to her only son Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew) wasn't satisfying enough, she needed the passion and when her eyes met the dashing and handsome Count Vronsky (Fredric March), she threw herself at him as desperately if he was some running train's wheel.

I guess he whole believability of "Anna Karenina" (the movie of course, I'm not talking about the literary masterpiece from Leo Tolstoy, which I didn't read because I'm more into Tintin and Asterix), so the whole plausibility of "Anna Karenina" lies in the confidence that even during her brief romantic interlude before responsibilities and social burdens showed the "bill", she'll find enough passion in Vronsky to make up for her lethargic and loveless marriage.

The problem is that Greta Garbo (which as a cinematic monument as the book is for literature) isn't convincing as the titular Anna. One would call 'blasphemy' but Garbo is such a presence that even the feelings that can fuel her hearts look as secondary as feathers on a hat. In that movie precisely, for all director Clarence Brown's good intentions to make it a legitimate romance, she seems as much in need of passion as Nicholas II for Marx' "Capital". Garbo is a splendid actress but maybe too dignified for a role that needed more liveliness, her heart seems forever mummified except for the moments where she visits Sergei her son, but not for one instant, I did believe in her romance.

And Fredric March carries some responsibility in that failure, he's convincing as the loyal and romantic cavalier but I noticed that in March, even as a lead character, likability isn't exactly his strongest suit. In "Anna Karenina", he strikes as a man loyal to his country, capable to resist alcohol and petty temptations, a great crocket player and horse rider, but too committed to duty and a semblance of etiquette not to appear stiff and rigid in a love that is supposed to make our hearts melt. And it's only because I believe in the competence of the two actors that I'd rather withdraw the term 'cold' and say they just looked bored. The romance was boring because as soon as they loved each other, they condemned themselves to isolation and shame.

Alexei refused to divorce Anna, reminding her of her marital obligations and Vronsky couldn't afford to ruin his reputation, the romance was a dead-end and the ultimate affront to her happiness was Alexei's forbiddance to see her son. It's a cruel part all right but the irony is that no matter how hard the film tries to make a villain out of Alexei, he comes across as a noble man, boring to some degree, but loyal and principled as attached to his vexed ego as Vronsky is dedicated to his uniform. Indeed, Vronsky, after his idyllic romance will crave for more adventures and thrills, invoking the same call of honor that forced Alexei to ruin Anna's life. So it comes to the emotional climax where Anna literally begs Vronsky not to leave her alone. Seriously?

I was wondering how a woman of Anna's intelligence could really expect that Vronsky would even desert the army for her sake, Anna's biggest mistake is that she didn't understand the mechanisms of gender-driven conventions and just committed a social suicide, and everything about her romantic aspirations backfired at her in the worst possible way. She's a tragic character we got it, but there's a sort of obviousness in that failure that emerges almost as instantly as the romance itself. Anna is an isolated woman all through the picture and can only realize how women who've been wise enough to stick to their roles like her sister-in-law Dolly (Phoeve Foster) or the cute Kitty (Maureen O'Sullivan) managed to be happy, and couldn't even pretend to envy Anna who destroyed the foundations of her life because of a romantic fling. Alexei warned after all.

This is a terrific tragic romance on the paper (and what paper!) but it's also a singular case of miscasting involving two great actors, Greta Garbo whose heart was locked in a dome of crystal from the start and the cold Fredric March who didn't even try to make her sacrifice worthwhile, kind of depressing isn't it. So what is left is the typical MGM costume drama with its ballroom sequence, a few vertiginous shots on a lavish banquet and a few great sequences that didn't fool the Academy. I was surprised that it didn't garner any Oscar nominations but maybe even at that part, there were failed Oscar baits. The romance was still convincing enough to garner an entry in the American Film' Institute's Top 100 romances, a meagre consolation.

It's still one of Garbo's most memorable roles as the woman who didn't want to be alone and ended more alone than ever.