Not a bad constringed version of Tolstoy's novel, given a grand Hollywood treatment. Garbo is Anna Karenina, married to an orgulous husband (Rathbone) and devoted to her young boy (Bartholemew). Everything in her rather orthodox life goes askew when she meets the Army officer Count Vronsky (March) and they fecklessly fall in love.
She makes a public spectacle of her adoration of the sexy, dashing March, and when her affair becomes obvious to Rathbone it imperils his honor, his career, and the future of their son, so he throws her out to wander the world.
March is in hot water too. Warned to cut out the adultery business, he resigns and joins Garbo in Venice for a lengthy and thoroughly disrespectable honeymoon.
Garbo doesn't mind leaving her husband but the guilt over her willing separation from her son gnaws at her. She begins to snap at March. She accuses him of wanting to get back into the Guards and fight in the Turkish-Serbian War, which in fact he DOES want, but not if it means leaving her. In the end, sufficiently provoked, he joins his friends in the regiment and takes off for the war, intending to return.
This leaves Garbo alone in Petersberg. She broods, becomes depressed, and throws herself under a train.
Garbo is okay. I never found her as beguiling as the paparazzi did. And March is always a competent actor but I never thought of him as having much in the way of dash. (He'd have made a better Karenin.) Freddy Bartholemew does a fine impression of the stiff, cold, slightly cadaverous, but honorable Basil Rathbone character.
It's Rathbone himself who gives the most memorable performance. We've seen him as many villains -- crossing swords with Errol Flynn, as Mr. Murdstone whipping Freddie Bartholemew, the kind of stern autocrat who brings pleasure whenever he goes. We've also seen him as at least a few heroes -- most notably Sherlock Holmes -- but here his character is complex, as complex as his Commanding Officer in "Dawn Patrol", and he carries it off nicely.
She makes a public spectacle of her adoration of the sexy, dashing March, and when her affair becomes obvious to Rathbone it imperils his honor, his career, and the future of their son, so he throws her out to wander the world.
March is in hot water too. Warned to cut out the adultery business, he resigns and joins Garbo in Venice for a lengthy and thoroughly disrespectable honeymoon.
Garbo doesn't mind leaving her husband but the guilt over her willing separation from her son gnaws at her. She begins to snap at March. She accuses him of wanting to get back into the Guards and fight in the Turkish-Serbian War, which in fact he DOES want, but not if it means leaving her. In the end, sufficiently provoked, he joins his friends in the regiment and takes off for the war, intending to return.
This leaves Garbo alone in Petersberg. She broods, becomes depressed, and throws herself under a train.
Garbo is okay. I never found her as beguiling as the paparazzi did. And March is always a competent actor but I never thought of him as having much in the way of dash. (He'd have made a better Karenin.) Freddy Bartholemew does a fine impression of the stiff, cold, slightly cadaverous, but honorable Basil Rathbone character.
It's Rathbone himself who gives the most memorable performance. We've seen him as many villains -- crossing swords with Errol Flynn, as Mr. Murdstone whipping Freddie Bartholemew, the kind of stern autocrat who brings pleasure whenever he goes. We've also seen him as at least a few heroes -- most notably Sherlock Holmes -- but here his character is complex, as complex as his Commanding Officer in "Dawn Patrol", and he carries it off nicely.