Anna Karenina (1935)

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Movie
German title Anna Karenina
Original title Anna Karenina
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1935
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Clarence Brown
script Clemence Dane , Salka Viertel and SN Behrman
production David O. Selznick for MGM
camera William H. Daniels
cut Robert Kern
occupation

Anna Karenina is an American film directed by Clarence Brown with Greta Garbo in the title role. It was brought into national distribution on August 30, 1935. The script was based on the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy .

action

The film roughly tells the plot of Tolstoy's novel of the same name. Anna Karenina is married to the older but very respectable Karenin according to the conventions of the time. The couple are members of the better society of Saint Petersburg and respect one another without really loving one another. Anna devotes all her care and feelings to her son Sergei. One day she met Count Vronsky, an officer in the Imperial Guard, in Moscow . Anna falls in love with the gallant seducer and both try to be happy beyond social conventions. But Karenin only accepts the separation on the condition that Anna does not see her son again. The initial love affair between her and Vronsky soon comes to an end when Vronsky separates from her to take part in a campaign with his former comrades. Anna can no longer cope with this renewed separation and throws herself in front of a train.

background

One of the reasons that moved David O. Selznick to switch from RKO to MGM was his father-in-law Louis B. Mayer's promise to make a film with Greta Garbo. Her last film, The Colorful Veil, was an artistic and financial disappointment. According to Selznick, the problems lay with the banal script and the unattractive clothes Garbo wore during the course of the plot. He tried to persuade the actress to change roles and suggested that she take the lead in the modern melodrama Victim of a Great Love about a young woman who dies of an illness and who meets the love of her life beforehand. However, Greta Garbo was determined to return to a historical role. The choice fell on Anna Karenina . Greta Garbo knew the literary model. She had already played Anna in 1927 in Love , a comparatively free film adaptation of the novel.

The problems started with the day of the decision. The strict censorship rules meant that essential references to the novel were not allowed to appear on the screen, and so the scriptwriters were forced to tell their own version of the events. The choice of Clemence Dane and Salka Viertel was not ideal in the eyes of Selznick, who did not really trust the two older women to bring something like passion and passion into the story. The opening sequence in which Garbo emerges from the smoke of a train, practically like an apparition, is remarkable. This shot is varied at the end when the actress is standing on a platform again and suddenly disappears from the picture without any movement in her face, because the character has thrown himself in front of the moving train.

Theatrical release

With a production cost of US $ 1,152,000, the film was above the MGM average and reflected Greta Garbo's prestige within the studio hierarchy. At the box office it was a relative success and grossed a good third more than The Colorful Veil in the US at $ 865,000 . Internationally, the film grossed a further US $ 1,439,000, making it one of the actress' most successful films with a total result of US $ 2,304,000. The profit for the studio ended up being $ 320,000.

criticism

Most reviewers were impressed by Greta Garbo's portrayal, even if the accusation was often voiced that Garbo is now too often seen in crinoline and hoop skirt and too little in modern pieces. Andre Sennwald wrote in the New York Times on August 31, 1935, enthusiastic about film and star:

“Garbo, the first lady of the screen, sins, suffers and dies beautifully in the new, skillfully staged and relatively adult version of Tolstoy's classic. A few years after the 1927 version, which was called love and was about it, cinema is finally able to hint at the social criticism of the original beneath the surface of Tolstoy's passionate story. Anna Karenina expands the camera's focus from the suffering of the two unhappy lovers to the decadent and hypocritical society that condemns the two to their misery. The staging creates a solid and effective drama that gains in importance through the combination of tragedy, loneliness and glamor that characterize Garbo's film personality. "

The lexicon of international films read:

"The film treats the subject sensitively and discreetly, and thanks to Greta Garbo's aura, which conveys tragedy and loneliness, it gains an idiosyncratic fascination."

Awards

Garbo won the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress for her performance .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Miss Garbo, the first lady of the screen, sins, suffers and perishes illustriously in the new, ably produced and comparatively mature version of the Tolstoy classic […]. Having put on a couple of mental years since the 1927 version of Anna Karenina, which called itself 'Love' and meant it, the cinema now is able to stab tentatively below the surface of Tolstoy's passion tales and hint at the social criticism which is implicit in them. [...] Anna Karenina widens the iris of the camera so as to link the plight of the lovers to the decadent and hypocritical society which doomed them. The photoplay is a dignified and effective drama which becomes significant because of that tragic, lonely and glamorous blend which is the Garbo personality.