Anna Karenina (1935 film)

• Greta Garbo: Anna Karenina
• Fredric March: Count Vronsky
• Basil Rathbone: Karenin
• Freddie Bartholomew: Sergei
• Maureen O'Sullivan: Kitty
• May Robson: Countess Vronsky
• Reginald Owen: Stiwa
• Phoebe Foster: Dolly
• Reginald Denny: Yashvin
• Gyles Isham: Lewin
• Joan Marsh: Lilli
• Ethel Griffies: Madame Kartasow
• Harry Beresford: Matwe
• Mary Forbes: Princess Sorokina
• Constance Collier: Countess Lidia
• Joseph R. Tozer: Servant
• Guy D' Ennery: tutor
• Buster Phelps: Grisha
• Sidney Bracey: Vronsky's fellow
• Ella Ethridge: Annas housemaid

Anna Karenina is an American film directed by Clarence Brown with Greta Garbo in the title role. He was taken to the national rental on 30 August 1935. The screenplay was based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy.

Action

The film tells in broad outline the plot of the novel by Tolstoy. Anna Karenina is married according to the conventions of the time with the elderly, but very respectable Karenin. The couple are members of high society of St. Petersburg and respect one another without really love each other. Anna devoted her entire care and all the emotions her son Sergei. One day she meets in Moscow Count Vronsky, an officer of the Imperial Guard know. Anna falls in love with the gallant seducer and both try to be happy beyond the social conventions. But Karenin accepted the separation only under the condition that Anna did not again see her son. The initial joy of love between her and Vronsky takes, however, soon came to an abrupt end when Vronsky from her severed by his former comrades in a military campaign to participate. Anna no longer cope with this recent separation and throws himself under a train.

Background

One of the reasons that moved David O. Selznick to change from RKO to MGM, was the promise of his father Louis B. Mayer to be able to make a film with Greta Garbo. Her last film The Painted Veil was an artistic and financial disappointment. After Selznick's assessment of the problems were in the banal script and unattractive clothes that wore Garbo in the course of the story. He tried to persuade the actress to a role change, and suggested that she take over the lead role in the modern melodrama victim of a great love, a young woman who dies from a disease and earlier still meets the love of her life. Greta Garbo was, however, determined to get back to playing a historic role. The choice fell on Anna Karenina. Greta Garbo knew the literary model. She had played in 1927, in Love, a comparatively free adaptation of the novel, Anna.

The problems began with the date of the decision. The strict censorship rules resulted in substantial remuneration of the Romans were not allowed to appear on the screen, and so the writers were forced to tell their own version of events. The choice of Clemence Dane and Salka Viertel was not perfect in the eyes of Selznick, who credited the two older ladies not right to take something like passion and passion into the story. Noteworthy is the opening sequence in which Garbo practically appears like an apparition from the smoke of a railway. This setting is varied at the end, when the actress is back at a platform and without any emotion on his face suddenly disappears from the picture, since the character has thrown in front of the moving train.

Theatrical Release

With production costs of U.S. $ 1,152,000 dollars, the film was higher than the MGM average effort and contributed to the prestige of Greta Garbo in the studio hierarchy bill. He was a relative success at the box office and played in the U.S. with 865,000 dollars over a third more than a The Painted Veil. International played the film a further 1.439 million U.S. dollars, so that the film with a total score of 2,304,000 U.S. dollars was one of the most successful strip the actress. The profit for the studio was $ 320,000 at the end of $.

Criticism

Most reviewers were impressed by Greta Garbo's portrayal, although in many cases the accusation was expressed Garbo was now to see too often in crinoline and hoop skirt and too little in modern pieces. Andre Mountain Forest wrote on 31 August 1935 in the New York Times wrote an enthusiastic film and Star:

" Garbo, the First Lady of the canvas, sins, suffers and dies beautifully in the new, cleverly staged and proportionate adult version of Tolstoy's classic. Some years after the release of 1927, which was called love and also acted exactly of the cinema is finally able to indicate the social criticism of the template under the surface of Tolstoy's passionate history. Anna Karenina expands the camera's focus from the suffering of the two unfortunate lovers on the decadent and hypocritical society that the two condemned to their misfortune. The staging is a dignified and effective drama that is gaining importance due to the combination of tragedy, loneliness and glamor that characterizes Garbo film personality. "

In the lexicon of international film is to be read:

"The film deals with the subject sensitively and subtly and gets by Greta Garbo's aura, which conveys the tragedy and loneliness, a peculiar fascination. "

Awards

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

Sources and literature used

• Barry Paris: Garbo. The biography ( Ullsteinhaus = 35720 ). To an app. enlarged edition. Ullsteinhaus, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-548-35720-2.
• Robert Payne: The Great Garbo. Reprinted edition. Cooper Square Press, New York, NY 2002, ISBN 0-8154-1223-1.
• Mark A. Vieira: Greta Garbo. A Cinematic Legacy. Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY 2005, ISBN 0 - 8109-5897 -X.
• Alexander Walker: Greta Garbo. A portrait ( = Knaur 2316 biography). Full paperback edition. Earthscan, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-426-02316-4.