Anna Karenina ***** (1935, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Basil Rathbone, Freddie Bartholomew, Maureen O’Sullivan, May Robson, Reginald Owen, Reginald Denny) – Classic Movie Review 2914

Producer David O Selznick and director Clarence Brown work over Leo Tolstoy’s great 1877 novel as a 1935 big studio movie vehicle for the great Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina, the young wife of the older 19th-century Russian noble Alexei Karenin (Basil Rathbone). Anna tragically falls for and has an affair with the handsome and brilliant young officer Count Vronsky (Fredric March). Her husband refuses to grant a divorce, and the story follows the personal and social repercussions.

Tolstoy’s tragic love story is perfect for Garbo. Indeed, she had already played the Anna role in the 1927 silent movie classic Love, with Edmund Goulding directing. And the great lady is ideally supported by her two co-stars as well as Freddie Bartholomew as her loving son Sergei, Maureen O’Sullivan as her flirtatious relative Kitty, May Robson as Countess Vronsky, Reginald Owen as Stiva and Reginald Denny as Yashvin.

This stirring movie is an extremely handsome MGM production with lovely black and white cinematography by William H Daniels and plush sets designed by Cedric Gibbons

With a score by Herbert Stothart and polished direction by Brown, this still remains the best of many attempts to film the novel. Adapting an enormously long novel, the screenplay by Clemence Dane, Salka Viertel and S N Behrman (dialogue adaptation) is so taut and compact that it is all done in 95 brisk minutes.

It was the winner of the Best Foreign Film award at the Venice Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle voted Garbo Best Actress. Perhaps surprisingly, Tolstoy himself was an adviser on the film. DVD available.

Also in the cast are Phoebe Foster, Gyles Isham, Buster Phelps, Mary Forbes, Ethel Griffies, Joan Marsh, Harry Beresford, Sarah Padden, Cora Sue Collins, Joe E Tozer, Guy D’Ennery, Buster Phelps, Sidney Bracey, Harry Allen, Ella Ethridge, Stanley Andrews, André Cheron, Davison Clark, Sam Flint, Otto Fries, Barry Norton, William Orlamond, Georges Renavent, Leonid Snegoff, Mischa Auer, Betty Blythe, Harry Cording, Gina Corrado, Helen Freeman, Olaf Hytten, Dennis O’Keefe, Pat Somerset, Larry Steers, Robert Warwick and Constance Collier.

Remade in the UK in 1948 with Vivien Leigh, 1997 with Sophie Marceau and 2012 with Keira Knightley. There are also several TV mini-series (1977, 2000, 2009, 2013) and a TV movie in 1985.

Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18 1905 in Stockholm. She died on April 15 1990, aged 84.

Garbo had formed a close relationship with the 11-year-old Bartholomew until he asked her for an autograph for his uncle. After that their relationship was strictly professional. For the rest of his life he was dismayed at suddenly losing her friendship.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2914

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