Russian and American Film Versions of the Novel "anna Karenina"

Russian and American Film Versions

Of

The Novel "Anna Karenina"

Contents

Introduction

1. Anna Karenina in the novel of Leo Tolstoy
2. Anna Karenina’s history in cinematography

1. First screen version
2. Russian screen version of 1967
3. American screen version of 1997

1. The modern perception of "Anna Karenina"

1. The resonance caused by the American version of "Anna Karenina"

Conclusion

Work Cited

Introduction

Today, as however, and there is always a set of disputes on misunderstanding by Americans (however, not only them) the Russian culture, traditions and history. It is difficult to say, of course, that we always show Americans correctly. However, the speech in this work will go more about Americans and we will stop on them.

All of us perfectly know that, judging by masterpieces of the  American cinema (including modern) "Americans think that Russia is somewhere between Turkey and the North Pole. Russia, according to Americans, it not only indispensable bears, infinite snow, boundless steppes, men with beards as at Leo  Tolstoy's and passion, boiling as tea in a samovar. It also frankly Semitic men who are making color of the Russian nobility, constantly reflexing and failing in private life. These are communists in red shirts (otherwise nobody will understand that they are communists)"

The attitude of Americans to Russians is discussed not the first decade and is treated by different people in own way. You can endlessly debate that question, however, there is another, not less interesting and a hot topic, actively discussed by all known to humanity the media. In recent years, there have been several films made in Hollywood on the works of Russian classics. The same pictures was present in the history of Russian cinema.

Is quite justified interest of critics to the paintings of this kind, because they give us the opportunity in some detail to assess and compare the attitude of different cultures to understanding the same problem. One of the clearest examples is a feature film released in 1997. The film is based on well-known novel by Leo Tolstoy "Anna Karenina".

In this work, I have attempted to compare the American version of the movie with a Soviet film adaptation, released in 1967, resorting to the help of critical articles.

1. Anna Karenina in the novel of Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy having read Alexandre Dumas treatise " L'homme-femme, réponse à M. Henri d'Ideville", has conceived the novel "Anna Karenina". The 70th years of the XIX century are occurred in Russia the aggravation of the "women's issue": open the first higher women's courses at universities, is preparing reform of the legislation on divorce, nearly impossible so far. All these signs of time directly or indirectly are reflected in Tolstoy's novel, but nevertheless the look of the writer is sent to the root of a problem: foremost freedom of the woman — freedom in love whether it is possible and what its consequences.

Anna Karenina is a perfect connection sometimes mutually exclusive qualities. Anna is graceful and natural, energetic and graceful, passionate and clever, sincere and tactful, strong and sensitive, is warm and cruel. Anna is an embodiment of feminity, Anna has turned out classical tragic heroine.

The Anna's sin undeniable; it is primarily the suffering of her son: because child шт marriage — the united soul and flesh of the spouses, which cannot be torn apart. But it is the fault that is fatal, of guilt without guilt, because the union of Anna with Karenin  in fact was without love and need for love — the most important and ineradicable property of female nature. And Anna persists in the choice, at first is spontaneous, then is conscious, causing the whole world on fight while she has an internal support — Vronsky's love. But it's not her fault that the choice is not capable of spiritual effort, without which the most passionate love is short-lived. Tolstoy's heroine realizes this self-treachery and the fault before the husband and the son, and illusoriness of the human relations in general in the last monologue. And she chooses the penalty, worthy fault also as a terrible, cruel way to get rid of the hated power of a body.

Having lost confidence in Vronsky's love, Anna can't find a support in herself. But there is some strange pride in her, unrestrained desire of impossible: either absolute love, or hatred.This property of Anna — property of Tolstoi, his own unrestrained requirement of the absolute truth, good and purity, impossible in reality and resulted the author of the novel in his own tragic dissonance with the world. "It’s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty! . . ."(399) —in this thought Anna dies in the one spring evening.

1. Anna Karenina’s history in cinematography

Whether can be treated today history of this heroine differently, than mythically? Today, 130 years later, the moral conflict of the novel of Tolstoy as if is exhausted. Female magazines recommend to the readers to bring the lover as vital dope and all diseases medicine. The divorce assimilated to visit of the dentist: slightly more than expenses, slightly less than pain. Motherhood of which treachery the writer is primarily blamed Anna, is about to cease to be the most rigid, invented sophisticated nature of the service of the feminine. "Case of love" — only unique, according to Tolstoy, the woman's vocation — it is now pushed by the wayside to other, more exciting and above exclusively men’s affairs. Here Anna Karenina — too the woman — couldn't to fill her life with either science or pedagogy or writing. Rare literary heroes have honor to continue life outside the concrete work, to enter mass consciousness as an art archetype. Such destiny was prepared for Anna Karenina of Tolstoy. It is possible to list huge number scenic and film interpretations of this image.

1. First screen version

The first of the great actresses of Anna Karenina was played by Greta Garbo. The tragic theme of the incompatibility of perfect human beings with the real world pervades all her famous films. In her Anna there is no external similarity to Tolstoy's heroine but, "remaining unlike externally, heroines of the novel and the movie are crossed and are equal in the perfection. Exclusive nobility in a look, gesture, a ducking of Garbo, her ecstatic passion and supernatural keenness especially strike against the background a spacious forehead of Vronsky in an operetta kosovorotka"(Butaeva, Women and station).