More Levin is no guarantee of success, though. The intelligent 1967 Russian version, directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi, pays a good deal of attention to Levin, and actually does him more justice than it does Vronsky (who is, in this Soviet interpretation, portrayed as a weak-willed aristocrat). The new “Anna Karenina” doesn’t forget about Levin (Domnhall Gleeson), or treat him as an inconvenient, slightly puzzling minor character, and although that’s welcome it’s not really an innovation. (In this version you might think that the name of Vronsky’s horse, Frou-Frou, is a homage to his mistress’s sense of personal style.) The gowns are frilly and fussy, and the hats are alarming when Anna watches Vronsky riding in a horse race, she looks like a Southern belle on Kentucky Derby day. Garbo’s wardrobe is especially distracting. The production values for which the studio was famous, are, as usual, ostentatious and wildly inappropriate. Although Brown’s direction is elegant, and Fredric March makes a fine, ardent Vronsky, the film plays as a high-class tear-jerker - which is clearly just what the studio, MGM, had in mind. This is the approach of the best-known movie adaptation, the 1935 version directed by Clarence Brown, with Greta Garbo, at the peak of her stardom, in the title role. It’s as if there were a cosmic conspiracy against her happiness: If a woman dares to love too deeply, as Anna does Vronsky, the gods will strike her down. “Anna Karenina” can, with minimal effort, be made to fit the template of a particular, once foolproof, movie genre, the “women’s picture.” In that sort of melodrama, the emphasis throughout falls on the suffering of the heroine - at the hands of men or ungrateful children or society at large, but always, ultimately, of fate. For filmmakers the problem with the book (aside from its length) is in fact that it lends itself rather too readily to the romantic fallacy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |