Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina - 1948 | 139mins | Drama | B&W

The Production Team

Director: Julien Duvivier.
Producer: Alexander Korda.
Script: Jean Anouilh, Julien Duvivier and Guy Morgan. (from the novel by Leo Tolstoy)
Cinematography: Henri Alekan.
Editing: Russell Lloyd.
Production Design: Andrej Andrejew.
Costume Design: Cecil Beaton.
Original Music: Constant Lambert.

The Cast

Vivien Leigh - Anna Karenina
Ralph Richardson - Alexei Karenin
Kieron Moore - Count Vronsky
Sally Ann Howes - Kitty Scherbatsky
Niall MacGinnis - Levin
Martita Hunt - Princess Betty Tversky
Marie Lohr - Princess Scherbatsky
Michael Gough - Nicholai

Plot Synopsis

There are some impressive names behind Alexander Korda's handsomely mounted but stolid adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy classic. Leading French playwright Jean Anouilh had a hand in the screenplay, Cecil Beaton designed the costumes, Henri Alekan was the cinematographer. Presumably, the sheer extravagance of the film-making appealed to austerity-era British audiences. The storytelling, though, fails to tug at the emotions.

This 1948 adaptation of Tolstoy's classic stars Vivien Leigh in the title role of Anna, a Russian wife who leaves her cuckolded bureaucrat husband, Karenin (Ralph Richardson), for an adventurous army officer, Vronsky (Kieron Moore). The affair ruins Anna's status in society and her husband refuses to give her a divorce, feeling discarded, Anna is sent to suicide by leaping in front of an onrushing train when husband, child, and lover are all lost to her.