Anna Karenina was a prestige drama directed by Rudolph Cartier. It was made to commemorate a quarter of a century of BBC television.
The drama was thought to be lost but it always existed in the BBC archives. The BBC just did not know it. It was shown again in 2024.
Good news as it stars Sean Connery, one year before he played James Bond for the first time. Connery did several plays for the BBC, several of them have been wiped.
As Anna Karenina is a complex weighty tome. This is a cut down version, all filmed it seems at the BBC studios.
It starts with Anna Karenina (Claire Bloom) being spooked by an incident at a train station. A person falls in the path of an oncoming train and gave out a piercing scream.
Anna is a beautiful young woman married to a minor politician and they have a young son. Only on a visit to Moscow, she develops an attraction to Prince Alexei Vronsky (Sean Connery.) A minor royalty.
They have an immediate attraction. Her husband suspects of an affair and warns her about it. Anna cannot resist, she has fallen in love with Vronsky.
With her husband unwilling to grant a divorce. Both Anna and Vronsky live together but she is forbidden of ever seeing her son. In fact the husband tells the child her mother has died.
It is the fact that Anna Karenina has been torn away from her son that dooms their relationship.
It does come across as a filmed play rather than a movie. Only purists of the novel would be upset by the story being cut down.
It is marvellously acted by the main leads. Both actors convey a lot of emotional depths. You can sense with Connery, there was a star that was just waiting to burst out.
