Anna Karenina

(Clarence Brown, US 1935, 95 min., 35mm)

National Endowment for the Arts. Tolstoy’s enigmatic heroine has come to the screen in various incarnations, but none has ever exposed the inner life of Anna Karenina with so much pathos, hope, and regret as Greta Garbo. Stripped of the trappings of 19th-century Russia, her Anna is every woman who has ever been swept away by the passion of pure physical attraction. Anna is loved by her husband, her son, and her friends; she has status, wealth, and security. She rashly trades all of that for a dead-end love affair with Fredric March’s dashing Count Vronsky. The dreary and pathetically shabby rooms they share perfectly illustrate the hopelessness and futility of her choice. Cut adrift, her spirit withers in that environment as she realizes that her undying passion is neither sustainable nor reciprocated.