This film, like movies I've previously reviewed David Copperfield and Tale of Two Cities, is from the golden age of MGM studio productions, produced by the incomparable David O. Selznick in 1935. It features sumptuous sets and costuming, the highest of production values, loving, softly-lit cinematography, fabulous music, and an all-star line-up of actors from the MGM stable. Anna Karenina, adapted from the Leo Tolstoy novel, runs about 95 minutes. Clearly it is impossible to jam 900 pages of classic novel into an hour-and-a-half, but MGM did their best, using their top-caliber leading lady Greta Garbo to play the lead.

Anna Karenina is the story of a woman who makes a fateful decision that affects her entire life, culminating in her untimely death. Anna, married with a young son, falls for dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Frederic March). Her husband, (Basil Rathbone) a public official concerned with his image, warns her not to make a scandal but she heedlessly runs away with Vronsky to Venice. When she returns, her husband will not let her see her young son (Freddie Bartholomew). In fact, he has informed the boy that his mother is dead. Meanwhile, chafing at inactivity and restless for new conquests, Vronsky enlists in a regiment to fight in the Turkish/Serbian war. Anna secretly goes to the train depot and observes him being seen off by another woman. In despair Anna throws herself under the wheels of the moving train.

The movie opens with a scene in the officer's club in St. Petersburg, with the smartly attired officers enjoying themselves in almost barbaric splendor. There is a long tracking shot coming back across the banquet table full to bursting with unimaginable luxuries and apparently about a hundred yards long. After dinner, the table is cleared and the serious drinking starts. Each officer has three glasses of vodka on a silver platter. Each also has an attendant across from him ready to replenish the drinks from several bottles ready to hand. One, two, three the drinks are polished off with military precision. Then "Right Face, March." The officers proceed to the head of the table and crawl under its length on hands and knees. After untold rounds of this ritual, Vronsky is the last man standing and he appropriates a bottle and takes it off to do some "serious drinking." Such was the splendor and decadence of Czarist Russia before WWI. This introduction of the Vronsky character is just before his fateful meeting of Anna at the train station while going there to pick up his mother. Anna was one of his fellow officers' sister, that's how they were introduced. So the film has a well-rounded screenplay, with a beginning and end both set in the train station.

The values, as I said before are absolutely top-notch. There is nothing more to ask from the resources MGM poured into Anna Karenina. Garbo is a languid, luminous superstar and March stands up well in comparison to MGM's greatest star of the thirties. I will be honest with you, it is more of a girl flick than I can get too interested in. I think a woman would give it five big stars, but it was just too slow-moving for me. It is technically a brilliant effort and bears repeated viewing. Garbo actually is little known today among the younger generation. I would have cast Marlene Dietrich myself. Now there is a woman! Because of my temperament, and the slow pace of the film, I can only give it three stars.

Happy viewing!





Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good Date Movie