DVD/150: ANNA KARENINA (Clarence Brown, 1935)

Of the 14 film adaptations of Tolstoy's novel, despite flaws, Garbo's is still my favourite.

Producer David Selznick gave it his usual heavy 'tasteful' gloss with lavish sets, hundreds of extras and Adrian's excellent costumes.

How many people today have seen a Garbo film?  She is iconic for heavy-lidded remoteness but I suspect that, probably like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, the image is all people know.

In close-up, she relies on ironic half-smiles, a lifted eye-brow and despairing eye-rolls of silent screen acting - she had already played Anna in 1927 in the silent film LOVE - but it is impossible to watch anyone else when she is on screen.

For an actress known for weary isolation, Garbo comes alive onscreen with other actors especially Basil Rathbone and Freddie Bartholomew's terribly British Sergei.  Rathbone gives us an icy, controlling Karenin while suggesting the confused man beneath.

Shelf or charity shop? Madame Karenina will stay in my DVD plastic storage box - a special mention for the excellent supporting performances of Reginald Owen as Vronsky's louche army pal Yashvin and an unbilled Constance Collier as the imperious Countess Lidia.  As usual, the role of Vronsky proves too much for the actor playing him, Fredric March is fine in the end-of-the-affair scenes but seems out of his depth in the earlier scenes of grand passion.

Dvd/150: ANNA KARENINA (Julien Duvivier, 1948)

This was the seventh screen version of Tolstoy's classic - another nine were to follow!

Thirteen years after Garbo's MGM version, Duvivier's film repeats several of it's problems: turgid pace, an overly-opulent design and an actress caught between a miscast Vronsky and perfect Karenin.

This was Vivien Leigh's first film in three years; she had endured a serious mental breakdown after a miscarriage but had recovered to appear onstage as Sabina in Thornton Wilder's allegorical comedy THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH under Laurence Olivier's direction.  Her Anna is beautifully delicate and tragic but an inner fire is missing.

Kieron Moore as Vronsky is resoundingly dull but Ralph Richardson as Karenin is at his dry, unfeeling best.

The compensations include Cecil Beaton's costumes, the cinematography and Martita Hunt as Princess Betty and while Vivien - and the film - do rise to a haunting ending, by then it has almost run out of steam.

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelf for Vivien alone..