You won't be disappointed!

hyped garbage

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie is based on another huge novel by Leo Tolstoy. It's not as long as "War and Peace," but nearly nine hundred pages. This is the sad story of Anna Karenina, a beautiful Russian woman (played by Greta Garbo) who is married to a man of great influence. She has a little boy whom she adores. One day, as she visits a brother, she is introduced to a military man named Vronsky (Frederic March). Despite her marriage, he is immediately taken with her. They begin to have an affair. She is filled with guilt but perpetuates the relationship. Eventually, Karenina (Basil Rathbone) finds out and makes severe demands on her. He threatens to take her son away from her. She is afraid but can't balance the two things in her head. This leads to some dire consequences for her when Vronsky leaves on a train.

Anna Karenina (1935): Dir: Clarence Brown / Cast: Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Basil Rathbone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Freddie Bartholomew: Classic tale of forbidden love that seems current with modern bad decisions with regards to relationships. Anna Karenina is married to a Czarist official and has a son but the marriage seems only as an image to his political agenda. She becomes entangled in a relationship with a military officer and when this becomes public her husband gives her a stern choice. She can either end the relationship or lose her marriage and her son. This is where the film becomes a tad problematic. Can someone really place a price on their own child? Of course, even today these relationships are rushed into and romance becomes but a myth or empty promise. This is a sad conclusion for anyone seeking romantic entertainment. Greta Garbo as Karenina is torn between a rock and a hard place. Frederic March as the military officer is led on by his own delusions of romance and his eventual yearning for military action. Basil Rathbone is terrific as Karenina's husband whose dominant position is tested until he retaliates. Maureen O'Sullivan steals scenes as Kitty who was originally smitten with March until her attention is turned. Freddie Bartholomew plays her son whom she is isolated from. Well made classic about the scars of bad relationships. Score: 8 / 10

Of the handful of astounding or classic books I've read in my life Voltaire's Candide is top - and is apparently unfilmable. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is another - and has been filmed many times but none of them coming anywhere near to doing the novel justice. This MGM Clarence Brown effort remains my favourite attempt, although at 92 minutes long it's still like seeing simplified and edited snapshots of the masterwork. Of the ones I've seen the 1948 UK version had a lot going for it but was just as edited, not as plush but if watched with the MGM can augment the experience; the 1967 Russian version was nearly 150 minutes long but almost laughable in it's hamminess and with dodgy English subtitles; the BBC 10 parter from 1977 was done on a low snoozy Sunday afternoon TV budget and it showed. I wonder if the 2012 entry is a cgi cartoon?Anna Karenin has a loveless marriage but dotes on her young son; dashing Count Vronsky a cavalry officer falls in love with her and vice versa – her husband disowns her leaving her to a life of shame and regret. It's expertly handled and amidst sumptuous Cedric Gibbons sets gives the viewer the gist of the simple perfection and satisfying elegance of the story. Only…here the big problem was they got Basil Rathbone as Karenin and Fredric March as Vronsky the wrong way round - Rathbone got the sympathy but also cut a far more interesting figure than March. Veronica Lake might have cast a witches spell on Greta Garbo to get her to fancy March! A lesser problem to me because understandable was that Levin and Kitty's tales were almost completely jettisoned, including the final part of the book for a rather lame and unnecessary mini-addendum by March and Reginald Owensky. And so what if Garbo occasionally over-acted, she was as usual suitably enigmatic. A truly valiant effort to film the book, and the one I recommend over the other versions to date.

Two things stand out for me in watching this fine film: Garbo's acting and the way in which the novel was transferred to the screen.Many American viewers are impervious to Garbo's acting even as they acknowledge her beauty. To the end of her life, despite more than 50 years of residence in this country, Garbo never became Americanized. She remained an anti-social foreigner who appealed mainly to Europeans. Since this approach does not work in the American melting pot, she retired after World War II had deprived her of her European audience.However, for many intellectuals and artists, whenever she appears on the screen it is as though an inner door has opened to all of European culture: its literature, painting and sculpture, drama, poetry, music, philosophy, architecture – everything. Though certainly no intellectual, Garbo had a profound instinct for the real thing that continues to inspire artists and creative thinkers in this global age of mass media.The script for this movie is an admirable adaptation of Tolstoy's long, panoramic novel of life among the upper crust in 19th century Russia. There are well-mounted scenes from an officers' banquet, a full-dress ball, a croquet party, a horse race, an Orthodox wedding and a Russian opera. Together with a searching musical score by Herbert Stothart, this sumptuous filmfare communicates volumes in itself.Foremost among the themes of the novel was the double standard, whereby married men can be openly promiscuous while married women must keep their hanky-panky a secret. Anna attempts to buck this trend through open adultery and loses everything. The inertial forces of society are symbolized in the novel and in the film by the train. The train scenes are very important to the unity of the story and are superbly photographed and abetted by sound effects and musical commentary.I could go on and on, but for reasons of space limitations must end here by declaring this film to be the best adaptation yet of one of Europe's finest novels. See it!