Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Anna Karenina (1935) was directed by Clarence Brown. The film is an excellent screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's great novel.The film stars Greta Garbo as Anna. Fredric March portrays Count Vronsky, and Basil Rathbone plays Karenin. March was a great actor, but I thought his Count Vronsky was too cold and unloving. Karenin is supposed to be cold and unloving. Basil Rathbone was a consummate actor, and his portrayal of Karenin was extraordinary.Greta Garbo was born to play this role. From the moment we see her features appear from within a cloud of steam, until the end of the movie, she's perfect. Of course, her beauty was fabled, but she also was a great actor. Anna Karenina was the perfect role for her, and she played it to perfection. There's no point in going on and on about Garbo. When you see the movie, you'll understand what I mean.It's interesting that director Brown was never considered to be among the elite directors of his day. However, he was Garbo's favorite director. The person introducing the movie told us that Garbo preferred him because (a) He knew how to film her to bring out her beauty and (b) he basically stood back and let her be Garbo.Even if Brown wasn't considered to be among the top directors of his time, the film he directed manages to convey the essence of Tolstoy's novel in 90 minutes. The novel is almost 1,000 pages long. Capturing this epic work in 90 minutes, complete with a long dance scene and a scene at the opera, is almost miraculous.We saw this film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. We watched a 35mm print, restored at Eastman. Of course, this is how the movie was meant to be seen. However, it will work well enough on the small screen.I checked the IMDb list, and learned that Anna Karenina has been filmed over 30 times. (Actually, Garbo played Anna in an earlier silent film.) Clearly, it's a novel that works on the screen. As I write this review, Garbo's Anna Karenina has a respectable 7.1 rating on IMDb. There may be other Anna Karenina movies with a higher rating than that. Remember that this version stars Greta Garbo. In my opinion, it's an essential film for people who love literature and movies. Find it and enjoy it.

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.

Adapting Anna Karenina, an epic work widely considered to be the greatest novel of all time, is perhaps an impossible feat. On the surface it is a simple tale about a woman with an unhappy marriage who seeks happiness with another man and is punished for it, but the novel is actually a carefully crafted patchwork of Russian society with acute insight into the psychology of each character (believe it or not, that was very innovative back in the late nineteenth-century). The general critical consensus is that this 1935 version, whilst flawed, is the best out of the many attempts there have been to film the novel.Greta Garbo stars as Anna Karenina, married to the cold bureaucrat Karenin (Basil Rathbone), who is much older than her. Naturally graceful and beautiful, she attracts the attention of the dashing Count Vronsky (Frederic March), and the two embark on a doomed affair. Meanwhile Vronsky's jilted lover Kitty (Maureen O'Sullivan) is pursued by farmer Levin (Gyles Isham).Readers of the novel will know that the Levin subplot makes up a considerable part of the novel and may be disappointed to know that in this version, it is cut down dramatically and Levin and Kitty's sweet romance is used as a contrast to the Anna/Vronsky affair, without showing the many problems that Levin and Kitty have to overcome. This doesn't have a drastic impact on the enjoyment of the film and it is perhaps for the best that the focus is on the Anna/Vronsky affair, as that is the most obviously dramatic of the two.From the iconic scene where Anna first steps off the train and Vronsky sees her emerge from a cloud of steam, we know that she is doomed. Tragedy is written all over Garbo's face but she is also graceful and seductive. In just one silent moment, Vronsky and Anna fall in love and their fate is sealed.March is convincing as dashing Vronsky but it is Rathbone's portrayal of Karenin that is masterful, allowing the viewer to feel some sympathy towards him. Perversely, some people even find prefer Karenin to Vronsky.Garbo portrays a sophisticated mature Anna, passionate but not in the childlike way that Anna is in the novel. How close she is to Anna in the novel depends on which elements of Anna you focus on.As said in the first paragraph, this film is flawed. At 90 minutes, it is far too short, and so the film is very episodic. It contains almost all the scenes you'd expect to see from the Anna/Vronsky affair, except the crucial scene where Anna almost dies having Vronsky's baby. We have the Hays office to blame for that.

I'm over sixty, and it took that long to get access to seeing all of Garbo's films. This begins quite well, but quickly devolves into an attempt at "epic" film-making, and we lose the intimacy Anna gains with Vronsky which she didn't find with her husband, although her cold, stifled marriage is successfully conveyed with a terrific Basil Rathbone as Karenin.In the previous silent version that Garbo sizzled with John Gilbert (in the role of Vronsky) in the 1927 "Love," more attention is given to the lovemaking. This 1935 version is well directed by Clarence Brown, but transitional scenes feel truncated at the expense of large set pieces (a ball, the opera, etc.).Garbo remains imposing however, not only as a physical presence, but also as a woman whose choices will never make her happy. I found myself watching her hands as much as that gorgeous face.Vronsky is given short shrift here. Neither his revelry which attracts a stifled Anna, nor his restlessness are ever developed. He's here and gone and she's under the tracks before we have much time to care one way or the other. The final scene with a mourning Count makes no impression (on us the audience or seemingly Frederick March the actor).As a relic of David O. Selznick's famous lavish detailed productions, it's memorable.