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Daily Archives: April 15, 2015

Anna Karenina (1948)

Posted on April 15, 2015 | 4 comments

Anna Karenina
Directed by Julien Duvivier
Written by Jean Anouilh, Guy Morgan, and Julien Duvivier
UK/1948
London Film Productions
First viewing/Hulu Plus

“I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

This is an adaptation of one of my favorite novels. Inevitably, a 110-minute movie cannot do justice to Tolstoy’s 800-page book.

Anna (Vivien Leigh) is married to the much-older Count Alexis Karenin (Ralph Richardson), a pedantic bureaucrat. They have a little son who is the light of Anna’s life. Anna’s brother Stepan has been caught in an affair by his wife Dolly. Anna travels from St. Petersburg to Moscow to make peace. She shares a carriage on the train with the mother of Count Alexis Vronsky, a young soldier who has been courting Dolly’s younger sister, Kitty. An old man falls under the train in Moscow, presaging the doom that is awaiting Anna there.

Anna is successful in reconciling her brother and sister-in-law. She goes to a ball where Kitty is expecting a proposal from Vronsky (Kieron Moore). But Vronsky wants only to dance with Anna and the die is cast. He follows her to St. Petersburg. Kitty, who had the same night rejected a proposal from Count Levin, grows ill from humiliation and heartbreak. The Kitty-Levin story, which makes up about half of the novel and provides a needed counterpoint to the Anna-Vronsky affair, is dropped almost entirely by the movie at this point.

The lovers cannot resist temptation. Karenin is remarkably tolerant, seeking only to avoid scandal. But Anna reveals the depth of her feelings in public when Vronsky is thrown from his horse and Karenin seeks a divorce. In revenge, he also asks for sole custody of the son. Although extramarital affairs are common in St. Petersburg high society, they are strictly recreational. By openly defying the rules, Anna becomes an outcast. Things go downhill from there. Then Anna becomes obsessed with the idea that Vronsky is about to abandon her …

Vivien Leigh convinces as a woman who would give up everything for love. Unfortunately, Kieron Moore makes a singularly weak and uncharismatic Vronsky. Richardson is good as the chilly Karenin and manages to give his predicament a hint of subtle pathos. But, although the staging is also good, the film is lacking in fire or depth.

Clips – Comparing Leigh and Garbo as Anna

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Posted in 1948

All My Sons (1948)

Posted on April 15, 2015 | 2 comments

All My Sons
Directed by Irving Reis
Written by Chester Erskine based on the play by Arthur Miller
1948/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] “I know you’re no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.”
― Arthur Miller, All My Sons[/box]

Even in its sub-par YouTube version and in parts, this was a powerful and wonderfully acted drama.

During the war, Joe Keller (Edward G. Robinson) made a fortune churning out airplane parts for the government. Later, both he and his partner were tried for delivering defective parts that resulted in the deaths of 27 men when their planes crashed. The jury believed Joe’s testimony that he was home sick when his partner made the decision to ship the parts. His partner and next door neighbor, Herbert Deever, was convicted and is now serving a long stretch in prison.

Joe and his family live in a storybook neighborhood in small town America. Their son Larry, a pilot, was listed as missing in action three years ago. His mother, Kate (Mady Christians), refuses to believe he is dead. She suffers from insomnia and assorted nervous ailments and Joe treats her with kid gloves. Their other son Chris (Burt Lancaster) lives at home and is being groomed to take over the factory.

Chris has just announced he intends to ask Ann Deever, Joe’s partner’s daughter and his brother’s ex-fiancee to marry him. His mother is adamantly opposed to this since approving of the marriage would mean acknowledging that her other son is not coming home. In addition, there is resistance against having any member of the partner’s family around although this point is not pressed. Ann and her brother have not visited the father in years out of shame.

Although Joe enjoys a cordial poker-playing relationship with his neighbors, it is privately believed by many that Joe knew all about the parts shipment. After all, everybody at the plant always says “Ask Joe” if you have a question about anything at all. Joe confronts it all with bluster and defiance. Chris believes in his father. Then Ann’s brother George (Howard Duff) arrives demanding to take her away. He has finally visited his father and now believes his father’s version of the events. There is a massive confrontation and it looks like the engagement is off.

Heartbroken, Chris goes to visit Deever in jail. Now he’s not so sure about his father any more. Meanwhile, still in love with Chris, Ann shows up with a piece of information for his mother that will turn the Keller household upside down. With Arlene Francis and Harry Morgan as neighbors.

Edward G. Robinson is genius in this movie. His character must be ruthless, courageous, and kind all at once and this is definitely the actor to pull that mixture off spectacularly. He must convey the tragedy of a man both betrayed by and betraying the American dream and has all the gravitas necessary for the part. While it is totally incredible that Burt Lancaster could be his offspring, the younger actor’s power matches him well. I also thought Mady Christians was superb. I had never seen the play or the movie before and I thought the writing was up there with Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Recommended.