Anna Karenina

Visually this movie is a black sheep among the other Soviet movies: it's shot absolutely astoundingly for a Soviet movie! Lighting and scenery are astonishingly crafted, wide-angle objectives, cranes and dollies are artfully used throughout the film making it look, despite of the poorly emulsified film (though not that bad for those times), like a highest-budget Hollywood movie. Photography direction and editing are also up to the highest notch! Direction and acting are great, no reason to praise anyone higher than the others (though my favourite is Nikolai Gritsenko as Alexander Alexandrovich Karenin). Truly a piece of a pure cinema art, absolutely creative, original and rich. Watch with pleasure.

I must agree with 'iliawarlock' on Samoylova's performance - but even though this is undoubtedly the weakest link, the film doesn't hold on many stronger points. Samoylova, who is best suited to play Soviet peasant or worker, is only the emanation of the overall psychological flatness, ignorance and self-content, characteristic of many destroyer-of-classic-texts communist era films. Plisetskaya is brilliant, and Lanovoy is also delightful. An interesting fact is that, before a screening which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, the still magnificent Vasiliy Lanovoy commented that his character Vronsky was incapable of the great love which Karenina had the gift for. From his performance, I got quite the opposite impression of a highly sensitive and devoted Vronsky - but thats the greatness of a complex text. Too bad we cannot witness a complex (if any) psychological interaction with Karenina in this dramatization.

Alexander Zarkhy's "Anna Karenina" is the best Karenina in the world. May be it's even better then Leo Tolstoy's romance :)) I've seen a lot of films on this romance, but no one of them, IMHO, compares to this one.

Anyway, Tatyana Samoylova is great actress, and Anna's meeting with her son Serezha is one of the most touching and heartbreaking cinema episode I've ever seen.

Tatyana Evgenyevna, ya ochen' Vas lublu :))

This movie was done well. The filming was beautiful and Tolstoy's novel (in so far as it is possible) was presented in a good light. The only spot that marred an otherwise-good film was the performance of the leading actress, Samoilova, playing Anna Karenina herself. So inept, clumsy,, irritatingly false and unconvincing was her performance that my single greatest sentiment throughout the film was: "Come on! Throw yourself on the train-tracks and get it over with!" Sadly, for over two hours my prayers went unanswered. A positive note, however, was struck by the stunning performance of the former legendary ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya in her role as the social lioness, Princess Betsy Tverskaya. Vasilij Lanovoj (memorable as Shervinsky, in 'Dni Turbinykh) was also a pleasure to watch as he made the most out of the relatively small role of Vronsky. In short: This would be a higher-than-average film, but for the tragically poor performance of the single actress that was under particular obligation to play well.

This film re-creates the historical setting of the 1860s brilliantly, then spoils it all with an Eisensteinian-expressionistic style of acting and photography that gives one the giggles with its melodramatic jerkiness. Worst of all is Rodion Shchedrin's shrill, strident score. It would be too loud and insistent for an axe murder in an insane asylum; in a drawing room from the reign of Alexander II it sounds simply ludicrous and irritating.

Vasili Lanovoy is handsome and romantic-looking as Count Aleksey Vronsky—his stiff bearing probably correct stylistically, his costumes wonderful. He does love to stare and lurch in that "I-am-Ivan-the-Terrible's-kid-brother" manner of Soviet film. His hair piece is not very good, either.

Lanovoy does at least very much look his part, which is more than can be said of the woman playing Anna Karenina. She looks a lot more like Anna Magnani, complete with black moustache. Mme Karenin is supposed to be an extraordinary aristocratic beauty, a being from the highest society. Here she looks like she has strayed from a film by Pietro Germi. The actress likes bombastic reactions right out of Mexican television drama, which the camera captures with Shchedrinesque careenings.

That great acting was possible, even in this school of film, is witnessed to by the master player of the role of Aleksey Karenin, Nikolai Gritsenko (1912–1979). He is quite unforgettable and detailed; he helps one understand Tolstoy better.

Most of the film is the other way around: one would hardly understand anything if one had not previously read the novel. The abrupt and disconcerting editing doesn't help.

No film could ever hope to do justice to such a literary masterpiece, but Clarence Brown's 1935 version is incomparably more satisfactory. Too bad. This could have been wonderful.