Anna Karenina, dutiful wife and doting mother, knows contentment but not passion. That changes when she meets ardent Count Vronsky. For him, she throws away marriage, family, social position and finally her life. Leo Tolstoy's novel receives sumptuous treatment in David O. Selznick's production. The cast - including Fredric March (as Vronsky), Basil Rathbone, Maureen O'Sullivan and Freddie Bartholomew - is stellar under the direction of Clarence Brown. But the soul of the film is Greta Garbo in a nuanced performance that won the New York Film Critics Best Actress Award. At the height of her art, Garbo is unforgettable as a woman helpless in love's thrall and heartbroken at the loss of her son. Her final scene will haunt you.
2.
Garbo won two consecutive New York Film Critics Awards for best actress in this and Camille--an altogether more satisfying selection. At 95 minutes, this handsome David O. Selznick production for MGM hasn't a prayer of doing justice to the rich supporting cast of characters in Tolstoy's thick novel (notably Kitty, through no fault of the perky Maureen O'Sullivan). That was equally true of Clarence Brown's 1927 silent version Love (1927), also starring Garbo, but it was both more passionate and more fluid; Brown's direction here gathers no momentum within scenes or in the film overall. Garbo's quiet "Too late, too late," as she realizes early on what a tragedy her obsessive love affair must lead to, is exquisitely doomed; but Fredric March makes a tiresome, even petulant, Vronsky. It's a measure of the film's misdirection that Basil Rathbone, icy-cold as the careerist husband Karenin, inspires more sympathy. At least he's entertaining. --Richard T. Jameson
3.
This stunning film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic romantic tragedy stars the incomparable Greta Garbo in the title role. Anna Karenina, a young Russian woman trapped in a loveless marriage, meets and falls in love with Count Vronsky (Fredric March), a member of the Russian army. Karenin (Basil Rathbone), her husband, refuses to give her a divorce, but, determined to pursue true love, she leaves her marriage and child to follow the soldier to Venice. Desperate to avenge his lost love, Karenin tells their son, Sergei (played by child star Freddie Bartholomew), that his mother has died in a foreboding and tragic twist of fate. However, Anna's romance with Vronsky falters when he deserts her to join the Turkish-Serbian war. In pursuit of their love, Anna follows him to St. Petersburg, but only tragedy awaits. Garbo gives a masterful and remarkable performance as Leo Tolstoy's ill-fated heroine--one of the most remade film stories--set against the sumptuous vision of czarist Russia.
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