Based upon the number of film adaptations which this novel has undergone, it would appear that this novel is a favorite among filmmakers as well. The first Pathé version appeared in 19112 (just one year after Tolstoy’s death) and the most recent one made by Joe Wright in 2012. 3 Meanwhile, numerous other versions were produced: two films starring Greta Garbo (1905-1990)4, the silent film Love (1927), and Clarence Brown’s Anna Karenina (1935); two versions starring British actresses, the 1947 version with Vivien Leigh and the television production of 1985 with Jacqueline Bisset ; five Russian adaptations, including two silent films (one by Vladimir Gardin, starring Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya in 1914), the filmed performance at the Malyi Theatre, with Alla Tarasova as Anna in 1953, Aleksander Zarkhi’s Anna Karenina (1967), with Tatiana Yevgenyevna Samoilova and the creatively interesting hybrid of 1974: the film ballet with Maya Mikhaylovna Plisetskaya (b. 1924) 5
In this article I will examine how Anna is presented in these various films by comparing the films of 1935, 1948, 1967, and 2012 in terms of how closely these various plots correspond to one another and to the original text of the novel.
When examining the various ways in which Anna Karenina has been interpreted in film it is important to keep in mind the country which the director is from. In the 1927 and 1935 films, the directors were from the United States. There would have been very little known about life in Russia in the United States in either 1927 or 1935, so these directors were interpreting Anna as an American woman living in Russia.
Fredric March (1897-1975), who played Count Vronsky, was initially a
very supportive character, but soon had a great deal of difficulty
understanding Anna’s mood swings and became eager to return to his comrades who
were on their way to war.
It was somewhat surprising, and a bit strange, to hear the chorus “Glory,
Glory to you, holy Rus'!”
played after Anna’s tragic death in the 1935 film. What point was the director attempting to
make by choosing that song? Was he
attempting to show that life continued on in Russia even though Anna was gone
or that Vronsky was beginning his new life without Anna? Suicide is not understood as a heroic act,
especially to an American audience, so this choice of music was certainly not
meant to glorify Anna’s suicide as some sort of heroic act for her
country. This chorus was originally presented in the
opera, A Life for the Tsar, by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857) about Ivan
Susanin who gave up his own life to save Czar Mikhail Romanov from the Polish
Army in 1613.6
In fact, this music only appears at the end of the 1935 film. There is no triumphant music at the end of any other film version of “Anna Karenina”. This can certainly lead one to believe that this music was chosen for a very specific purpose, but I have not been able to locate any information about such a purpose. Was this music meant to indicate that Anna had given her life for the glory of Russia? We do not know. Neither Clarence Brown (1890-1987), the film director nor Herbert Stothart (1885-1949) spoke about why this music was chosen at the end of the film.
The 1948 film was produced in England and, not surprisingly, Anna and
the other characters in the film come across as very British. Throughout the film, Anna comes across as
almost emotionless. Kieron Moore
(1924-2007), who plays Count Vronsky, does not give the impression that he does
not love Anna, but neither does he give the audience the impression that she
can turn to him for any kind of emotional support.
Throughout the film it was very easy to ask the question, “How will the director show us why Anna kills herself?” Vivien Leigh (1913-1967), who played Anna, came across as a rather logical woman with a “stiff upper lip”. She showed very little emotion, even when she calls her husband to her bedside and announces that she could die at any moment.
However, everything changes after the scene where Anna appears at the opera theater by herself. Anna sees Count Vronsky sitting with his mother and a young woman in his mother’s theater box. Anna is being accosted by those around her and Vronsky is nowhere to be found. Then, as she is preparing to leave, Vronsky shows up.
Later, Vronsky and Anna leave St. Petersburg and go to Italy. While in Italy, he receives a telegram from
his mother who asks him to return home.
Vronsky is emotionally distant at this point. Anna has become convinced that Vronsky does
not love her and that his mother is trying to arrange a marriage between
Vronsky and the young woman from the opera theater. However, Instead of saying or doing something
to assuage Anna’s fears, Vronsky leaves her a very emotionless note that he had
returned to St. Petersburg and would be back in two days.
At this point, Anna believes that all hope is lost. She can no longer see her child, her marriage is over, and her lover now loves another woman. It is all very logical. She boards a train for St. Petersburg and when the train stops at a certain station, Anna leaves the train to get some air. She begins to reflect upon her life while standing on the train tracks and we see her get run over by the train. She does not utter a sound prior to being struck by the train.
In the 1935 film, Alexei Karenin is played by Basil Rathbone (1892-1967), who later became famous playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of films. Karenin came across as a very strict man who cared only about public appearances. He was very heavily influenced by rules of social etiquette and seemed to care very little about Anna’s feelings. After Anna told him that she loved Vronsky, Karenin not only told Anna that he would never grant her a divorce, but that she was forbidden to ever see their son, Sergei, again. This was too much for Anna to accept. It was very easy to dislike this character and understand why Anna fell in love with Vronsky.
Ralph Richardson, a British actor, played Karenin in the 1947 film and he was likewise more concerned about social etiquette than Anna’s feelings. This character was not as harsh as Rathbone’s character, but it was also easy to dislike him. What we often fail to take into consideration is that Karenin had every right to respond the way that he did. If Vronsky were a female, he would be referred to as a “home wrecker”, but since he is a man this is simply seen as a love story between a dashing military man and a wealthy housewife whose husband does not understand her.
That is why during the conversation between Karenin and the lawyer there is so much time spent talking about Karenin having evidence to prove Anna’s infidelity. Such evidence could be seen as a legitimate reason for divorce, but the other problem was the possibility of public scandal. The issue of scandal is mentioned in the various film versions, but there is no discussion about the difficulty of obtaining a divorce.8
The 1997 film “Anna Karenina” which was
produced by Bernard Rose (b. 1960) and stars Sophie Marceau (b. 1966) in the
title role, is a very interesting adaption of Tolstoy’s novel. It was obvious that Rose had borrowed several
ideas from the 1948 film with Vivien Leigh, but he also added some new elements
which were not present in the earlier films.
For example, the story, in this film, is told by Lev Tolstoy through the
character of Constantine Levin.
Sir Georg
Solti’s (1912-1997) choice of music also had a profound
impact on the film. Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s
(1840-1893) Sixth Symphony, which he wrote prior to his own death, the choice
of Tatiana’s aria from the opera “Evgeny Onegin”, and the music
of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) helped to tell the story, even without
words.
Jude Law’s character came across as a saint. I began to ask myself, “How could any woman be so stupid as to leave this man for Vronsky?” Not only was Alexei Karenin not mean-spirited, but at the end of the film he is seen raising the child that Anna and Vronsky had while she was still married to Karenin. There is no mention of this anywhere in the novel and I am not quite sure why Joe Wright felt the need to add that into the film.
The audience for each film is also introduced to the characters of Stepan, Dolly, Kitty, and Constantine Levin. Stepan and Dolly are there simply as a way of introducing us to Anna since Stepan, Anna’s brother, picks Anna up at the train station in Moscow very early on in the film. Kitty is introduced to us because she is a rival love interest of Vronsky, but that fades quickly after Vronsky meets Anna.
Instead of seeing the contrast between the failed marriage of Karenin and Anna and the loving conversion experience undergone by Constantine Levin, the audience is simply left to believe that Anna was a wealthy misunderstood housewife who had a romantic fling with a dashing young military man, but finally killed herself when she realized what she had actually given up.
Based upon this view that Tolstoy is like Anna, that means that Sophia is
like Karenin. It should not surprise us
that when Tolstoy was dying, the one person that he did not want to see was
Sofia. He died near the train station
where he left the train and the one person he did not want to see what his
wife.
End
Notes
1. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Anna Karenina (NY: International Collectors Library) [trans. by Constance Garnett], p. 4
2. This film, which
began the history of the numerous cinematic adaptations of Tolstoy’s works in
world cinema, has not survived.
3. “Anna Karenina 2012” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_(2012_film) This film won an Academy Award in 2013 for
“Best Costume Design”.
4. She received the
Best Actress Award from the New York Film Critics for playing Anna in the 1935
film.
5. In Irina
Makoveeva’s “Cinematic Adaptations of
Anna Karenina” (Studies in Slavic
Culture, University of Pittsburgh, pp. 111-134) In her dissertation, The Modes of Storytelling: A Rhetorical Analysis of Film
and Television Adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the
Baskervilles and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina,
Beata Jurkowska-Krupa compares the setting, plot, characters, point of view,
and use of literary tropes in the 1935 film and the TV version of 1985. She
analyzes how the structures of film and television influence the choice of
rhetorical devices used in the stories they tell. I disagree with some of her
conclusions: for example, the statement that television adaptations follow the
narrative devices of the literary texts more closely than do film adaptations.
In the case of the Anna Karenina versions, she is misled by her
focus on the 1935 film, for a comparison with the Russian version of 1967 could
have given opposite results.
6. “A Life for the Tsar” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Life_for_the_Tsar
7. Irina Makoveeva “Cinematic Adaptations of Anna Karenina”
(Studies in Slavic Culture,
University of Pittsburgh, p. 118.
8.”Tsarist Russia and
the Women’s Movement” http://gem.greenwood.com/wse/wsePrint.jsp?id=id576
9. “Issues in the
Tolstoy Marriage” http://marriage.about.com/od/thearts/a/leotolstoy_3.htm
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