Anna Karenina (1948)

Anna Karenina: Directed by Julien Duvivier. With Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, Kieron Moore, Hugh Dempster. A married woman’s affair with a dashing young officer has tragic results.

“This film is like the adaptation of Wuthering Heights Goldwyn made in 1939. –Which is to say it cuts its indebtedness to its literary namesake to the bone so completely youu0026#39;d swear the producers were paying for the use of the name based on percentage of fidelity to original source material. This is still a common practice, to take a hot literary property or should-be sacrosanct classic and completely wing it on your u0026quot;interpretationu0026quot; of the story. (See the recent refry of Scarlet Letter, for example.) Understand, I wonu0026#39;t carp about the issue of fidelity, per se. My point is more like why even bother to use the name as a film title if you find it expedient for one reason or another to ditch the plot and refit the original character nuances.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe redeeming feature of this film lies in the way it pays off with a big, teary, dramatically oh-so right finish. Youu0026#39;d have to be pretty flinty not to feel it. –The sad, stunning finish seems, after all is said and done, the films reason for being. See it. 8 stars.”