Anna Karenina
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- The first sentence of Anna Karenina is one of the best-known openings of any novel: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 . Tolstoy clashed with its editor over issues that arose in the final installment. Therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered this book his first true novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy started reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.
Although most Russian critics panned the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion is seconded by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style" and the motif of the moving train, which is subtly introduced in the first chapters (the children playing with a toy train) and inexorably developed in subsequent chapters (Anna's nightmare), thus heralding the novel's majestic finale.
Film, television, and theatrical adaptations and references
Film
- 1914: Anna Karenina (1914 film), a Russian adaptation directed by Vladimir Gardin.
- 1915: Anna Karenina (1915 film), an American version starring Danish actress Betty Nansen.
- 1927: Love (1927 film), an American version, starring Greta Garbo and directed by Edmund Goulding. This version featured significant changes from the novel and had two different endings, with a happy one for American audiences.
- 1935: Anna Karenina (1935 film), the critically acclaimed version, starring Greta Garbo and Fredric March and directed by Clarence Brown.
- 1948: Anna Karenina (1948 film) starring Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and directed by Julien Duvivier.
- 1953: Anna Karenina (1953 film), a Russian version directed by Tatyana Lukashevich.
- 1960: Nahr al-Hob (River of Love), an Egyptian movie directed by Ezzel Dine Zulficar
- 1967: Anna Karenina (1967 film), a Russian version directed by Alexander Zarkhi.
- 1974: Anna Karenina (1974 film), a Russian version directed by Margarita Pilikhina.
- 1985: Anna Karenina (1985 film), a TV Movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Christopher Reeve, directed by Simon Langton.
- 1997: Anna Karenina (1997 film), the first American version filmed entirely in Russia, directed by Bernard Rose and starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean.
- 2000: Anna Karenina (2000 film), a British version by David Blair and starring Helen McCrory and Kevin McKidd.
- 2012: Anna Karenina (2012 film), a British version by Joe Wright from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law.