Anna Karenina is the wife of the much older Czarist official Karenin. While in Moscow she tries to persuade her brother Stiva from a life of debauchery and adultery. She also meets military officer Count Vronsky. Back home in St Petersburg she begins an affair with him, a liaison which destroys her marriage; she is prohibited from seeing her son Sergei. As she becomes shunned by society her relationship with Vronsky also suffers, with eventual dire results.[2]
The film grossed $865,000 in the United States and Canada, and grossed $1,439,000 in other markets. It brought MGM a profit of $320,000.[3]
Critical response
Writing for The Spectator in 1935, Graham Greene made much of Greta Garbo's powerful and theatrical acting in the film, noting that "it is Greta Garbo's personality which 'makes' this film, which fills the mould of the neat respectful adaptation with some kind of sense of the greatness of the novel". Greene found that the pathos that Garbo's acting brings to the picture overwhelms the acting of all supporting cast save that of Basil Rathbone.[4]
Helen Brown Norden, in a glowing review in Vanity Fair, wrote "Against the glittering background, these people move to their inevitable doom. There seems more of anguish and more of sombre depth in this version than there was in the old silent film (with Garbo and John Gilbert). Garbo—still with that remote look of 'the implacable Aphrodite' on her face—acts with a dignity and a bitter passion which reach a mature climax in the final scene."[5]
The film has received acclaim from modern critics. It holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews, and an average rating of 7.1/10.[6]
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