Customer Reviews

Anna Karenina (1935)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

The classic 1935 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's tragic masterpiece is still a joy to behold. Greta Garbo is breathtakingly-lovely in one of her greatest screen performances.

Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo) lives a life of dull monotony, broken only by the presence of her engaging son Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew). Her cold husband Karenin (Basil Rathbone) treats her more like a trophy than a wife, and she relishes her carefree visits to her relatives.

When Anna falls in love with the dashing - and younger - Captain Vronsky (Fredric March) she gives way to a great passion...and even greater tragedy.

This was in fact a remake of the hugely-successful silent film LOVE, again starring Greta Garbo with her frequent leading-man (and lover) John Gilbert. Both versions are splendid, but this version stays more faithful to Tolstoy's novel.

Also starring Maureen O'Sullivan, May Robson and Reginald Owen.

Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo) is a married woman who finds herself falling in love with the man (Fredric March) her sister (Maureen O' Sullivan) is in love with. It is absolutely taboo for her to even consider taking her new love on as a lover, especially since she has a young son (Freddie Bartholomew) who she adores. However, it is difficult for her to live under the frightening gaze of her rigid husband (Basil Rathbone) so she submits to her feelings.

The novel Anna Karenina is incredibly long so it is obvious that a lot was cut to bring it to a 95 minute film. However, the formation of the relationship between Garbo and March is difficult to believe since there is so little time for it to develop. Their early scenes seem stiff and without feeling. The overall story is also muddled with various events probably important in the novel but seemingly insignificant in the film.

This is the second version of this classic story that Garbo brought to the screen, the first being the silent film Love. As a result, she is natural in the role. However, her performance does not change the dull script.

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.

Greta Garbo stars as Leo Tolstoy's tragic heroine in this 1935 film directed by Clarence Brown and produced by David O. Selznick. In 19th-Century Russia Anna is married to a wealthy government man, Karenin (Basil Rathbone), and bears him a son, Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew). When Anna goes to visit her brother, Stiva (Reginald Owen), to try and save his marriage after his numerous affairs, she meets and falls in love with Count Vronsky (Fredric March). Anna returns home and asks Karenin for a divorce, but he refuses and warns that if she continues her affair with Vronsky she will lose her son. But Anna still decides to run away with Vronsky to Venice, and for a while they are happy together. Then Vronsky wants to return to the army.

This film provides one of Garbo's finest performances in the type of role that made her famous, namely a tragic beautiful woman whose life is ruined by ruthless men. In fact, she won the New York Film Critics Cirlce Award for Best Actress. But in the end Anna has given up her son and Vronsky refuses to give up going to war, which is why we get the tragic ending. "Anna Karenina" was a remake of Garbo's silent film "Love," which she made in 1927 with John Gilbert, but that film is not available on video otherwise you would have a perfect Garbo double-bill with the two films. Certainly March is a much better actor than Gilbert, but Garbo is the star of this one. Despite the meticulous costumes and settings representing St. Petersburg, she steals the show in this film. I think there is something to be said for using great literature, which provides greater depth than you get with most of her romantic vehicles. "Anna Karenina" was remade again in 1948 with Vivien Leigh.

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.

The classic novel by Tolstoy is something more than a tale of sin and retribution, old style. Each character, while being completely individual, is just as completely a product of class and time and envirnment. The word "doomed" is used in the dialogue, and though as a word, under the circumstances, it echoes with suggestions of melodrama and mock-heroics, it has this accuracy in it, that it suggests the fatal and inescapable power with which tradition, position and point of view worked upon the Russian aristocracy of the period. With a firm foundation to stand on, Garbo portrays Anna with rare depth and beauty, as a gentlewoman of charm and poise, radiating a calm and enchanting loveliness, in who a great passion awakes, stirring up profound emotions and sufferings. She does it so quietly and subtly that you never catch her in the act of working to create an effect. It is as natural and true as if you were being permitted to eavesdrop on a woman in moments of most complete unselfconsciousness, so intimately herself that the make-up box seems a million miles away. This creation is the soul of the picture, and gives it its whole unity and meaning. Whether or not you are fascinated by Fredric March, Garbo makes you believe that he fascinated Anna, and on that belief the entire structure of the drama depends. Other actors fill the scene with varying effect, among whom Basil Rathbone, Phoebe Foster, and Constance Collier - help substantially in building the setting in which Anna's love was so foreordained to tragedy.

"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.

+++++

This movie is based on the very long 1877 Russian novel "Anna Karenina" by Count Leo Tolstoy (1828 to 1910).

The thick novel is really two novels: a powerful drama of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage seeking love and happiness and Tolstoy's spiritual confessions of his lifelong meditations on birth, death, and God.

This movie focuses out of necessity for time constraints on the first aspect mentioned above.

Thus this movie is about Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo), a woman who has beauty, social position, wealth, a husband (Basil Rathbone), and a son (Freddie Bartholomew) who adores her but her existence seems empty. When she meets the dashing officer Count Vronsky (Fredric March), she rejects her marriage and turns to him to fulfill her passionate nature.

Greta Garbo along with Fredric March carry the movie and they both give fine performances. Even Freddie Bartholomew (who was then a child star) does a good job. In my opinion though, Basil Rathbone gives a very convincing performance as the husband who is concerned with his career and social position above everything else.

The Russian music that occasionally plays is fantastic. The costumes are a sight to behold. All scenery and cinematography are breathtaking.

Unfortunately, the movie seems rushed and doesn't do justice to the rich supporting cast of Tolstoy's novel. There is a sub-plot with two other characters that seems to go nowhere. The forming of the relationship (that's central to the movie) between Garbo and March seems somewhat unbelievable since not enough time is given for it to develop. Worse still, as the movie proceeds it doesn't seem to gain momentum and becomes more-or-less predictable (even though I did not see the last scene coming).

Finally, the DVD itself (the one released in Sept. 2005) has good sound quality. The picture quality is also surprisingly good (especially when you consider that this movie was made so long ago) but there are faint streaks or lines that occasionally occur in the last scene. There is one extra: a theatrical trailer.

In conclusion, I think Greta Garbo fans will appreciate this movie despite its problems much more than non-Garbo fans.

(1935; 95 min; black and white; 27 scenes; full screen)

+++++

Garbo plays the title character who forsakes her home and family for the love of the army officer Vronsky (played by Frederic March). It can't hold up to the book, of course, but Garbo is magnificent to watch, and Basil Rathbone as her demanding husband is simply terrific and faultless. In fact, Rathbone sticks more in the mind than March does. Definitely worth a watch.