Happy movies are all alike

A year ago, I blogged about the 1935 Hollywood version of Anna Karenina which aired as part of a night of literary remakes on TCM. I didn't want to blog about the 1948 British version of Anna Karenina right away, but I see now that it's going to be on TCM tomorrow morning at 10:15 AM as part of another day of Russian literary adaptations, so now would be a good time to blog about it.

If you remember the 1935 version, or ever had to read the book, then you probably know the basic story. Anna Karenina (Vivien Leigh) is married to Andrei (Ralph Richardson), a relatively senior civil servant in the Tsarist government in St. Petersburg. She's got a brother Stepan Oblonsky living in Moscow who is currently having some difficulties with his wife Dolly (Mary Kerridge), so Anna is invited for a visit to try to smooth things out.

On the train to Moscow, Anna meets Countess Vronsky (Helen Haye, no S on the end), mother to a military officer, Count Andrei Vronsky (Kieron Moore) who will be meeting Mom at the station. Anna sees Vronsky, and there's immediately a spark between the two because, after all, young Vronsky is universally described as dashing. And since the Karenins and Vronskys are in the same echelon of society, they're bound to meet each other over and over again at the high-society parties held in Moscow and Petersburg.

With Anna and Vronsky continually running into each other and with Anna not making any attempt to hide what she's feeling about Vronsky, it's no surprise that her husband is going to find out what's going on. Karenin is a relatively austere and highly moral man, at least as regards Tolstoy's warped view of Christiantity. Never mind that the Production Code in Hollywood and the less oppressive British board would insist Anna be punished for her since, Tolstoy demands it too.

Andrei Karenin thinks about filing for divorce, but the Orthodox Church is fairly specific on what grounds are acceptable for breaking what is, after all, supposed to be a sacred union. When he goes looking for letters, Anna decides she's going to run off to Italy with Vronsky to get away for a while, which is even more scandalous, and potentially harmful for Vronsky, whose mother wants him to have a respectable wife. That desire, combined with Karenin's attempts to keep Anna from seeing their son, eventually drives Anna to the eventual end of the story.

I found that both this and the 1935 versions of Anna Karenina had things to recommend them. Being based on a novel by Tolstoy that runs to 800-plus pages, you can't fit everything into a two-hour movie, and that means that the philosopher-farmer character of Levin gets excised. That's not such a bad thing since in the book Levin is another peg for Tolstoy's proselytizing of his beliefs, and drags the book down.

The acting in this version is good, and the technical production values are not quite up to MGM's, even 13 years later. This is particularly noticeable in the rear-projection scenes, which don't seem to have advanced since 1935.

When TCM ran this back at the end of 2019, they put it in a 150-minute slot. IMDb lists a running time of 139 minutes, so 150 minutes would be right. But the movie ended after about 112 minutes. It turns out that for the American release, a bunch of stuff was cut to get the running time down to that 112 minutes, and this is the print TCM ran. This time around, the movie is in a two-hour slot, so I'd assume we're getting the 112-minute print again.

There are a bunch of versions of Anna Karenina available on DVD, but this 1948 version doesn't seem to be in print, at least not legitimately. So you're going to have to catch the rare TCM showing.