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Anna Karenina (1947)

Average rating

(58%)

Starring:	Vivien Leigh \| Ralph Richardson \| Kieron Moore \| Marie Lohr \| Sally Ann Howes \| Niall MacGinnis \| Michael Gough
Director:	Julien Duvivier
Studio:	WARNER HOME VIDEO
Run time:	110 mins
Genres:	Drama
Languages:	English
Released:	June 28, 2004

Vivien Leigh stars as Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's enduring tragic heroine. Anna leaves her socialite husband behind for a more exciting military officer. In search of a meaningful relationship as well as an exciting and more adventurous life, Anna goes through a string of emotions when she becomes the third party of a strenuous love triangle. From depression to happiness to near emotional destruction, she must learn to deal with the elements that surround her tragic existence.

Halliwell's Film Guide

Vivien Leigh is lashed about by the tremendous role of Anna like a pussy cat with a tigress by the tail. She is not helped by a script which insists on sentimentally ennobling one of fiction's most vehemently average women.

Highest rated reviews

*** May contain spoilers ***

Rated 2.0 stars
dripping with syrup!

A Customer from London, 6th December, 2008

This adaptation suffers from the malady that the very vast majority of attempts to bring a great novel to the screen have - it rushes headlong into the story at a great pace, dispensing with all the build-up. It then plonks itself right into the middle of the tale and gets stuck there, going nowhere but floundering in mires of syrup and angst. Then, it manages to pull itself out and rushes headlong to the close. As a consequence, its terribly uneven, and the central section is just a pile of sentimental mush which has little or nothing to do with the source. At 2 hours 10 minutes, theres a lot of mush to wade through. It pains me to say that Vivien Leigh is NOT Anna Karenina by a long shot - she spends too much time being 'veri, veri unheppi' and strangulating every line. Sure, she looks the part, but the dialogue is gloopy and there is little character development. The fnail scene is laughable - Leigh throws herself into the path of the train which proceeds to pass over her without ever touching her, and we are expected to beleive that she's been crushed to death. But of course, she had to remain completely recognisable for the final shot. The film is like wading through a vat of golden syrup. The only real spark of interest is the very young Sally Anne Howells as Kitty, later to play Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Bang Bang. A very poor attempt at bringing one of the worlds greatest novels to the screen, simply as a vehicle for its star.

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