In all my decades of movie-buffdom I've somehow managed to see a grand total of one Greta Garbo film. I've read acres of copy about her and enjoyed those stories of her being stalked by paparazzi on the sidewalks of Manhattan during her declining years but I've never felt the urge to actually see her in action.It's a state of affairs I felt I really should rectify so tonight I sat down to watch her 1935 effort ANNA KARENINA. I expected to be dazzled by her beauty and beguiled by her goddess-like aura, but I wasn't. Garbo distinctly underwhelmed me. She was neither an ethereal beauty nor a magnetic screen presence. She came across as just another well dressed, overly made-up MGM leading lady of the 1930s.
The film itself is a lavish visual spectacle. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes beautiful and the camerawork creative. Early on, during a banquet scene, director Clarence Brown draws his camera down the middle of an incredibly long table laden with food. Candelabra swish by on either side as the camera travels backwards seemingly forever. The shot is spectacular yet so subtle that it takes a moment to recognise just how impressive it is.
The cast is star-studded, as one would expect of a prestige MGM production. Basil Rathbone is malevolently magnificent as Anna's manipulative husband, May Robson fusses and clucks as Vronsky's mother, and Fredric March is suitably dashing, if a little dull, as Vronsky.
I've never read Tolstoy's novel but it's clear from the way in which the film's ending suddenly arrives that the original text has been severely compressed, presumably to cut out the "boring bits." Sure enough, a quick check on Amazon.com reveals the novel to be a weighty 830 plus pages long, while the film clocks in at just 90 minutes.
ANNA KARENINA is not really my kind of movie. It's too worthy and too lavish for my taste, but at least I can now say, should anyone care to ask, that I've seen two Garbo films, and maybe in a decade or so I'll be ready for a third.
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