![]() ![]() ![]() Ralph Richardson, however, is perfect -far superior to Basil Rathbone. Vivian Leigh is a great beauty, very aristocratic, very British in her reserve, but when she falls in love with Vronsky she seems constitutionally incapable of the unbridled passion that Garbo brings to the role. Perhaps the greatest fault of the film is in the style of the acting. Technically, this film contains some of the best B&W work ever done in Britian. On the plus side, we have the sort of lavish the sky's-the-limit big, big, bigger budget production that only the Hungarian Alex Korda could have produced a few years after the world war on the sound stages of London -sets by the Russian Andreiev, costumes by the English Cecil Beaton deep-focus photography and lighting by the French Henri Alekan ("Belle et Bete"), and music by the English composer Constant Lambert. What we end up, sad to say, is a first-rate melodrama without the psychological subtleties of the book. How can one possibly turn Tolstoy's novel into a "short" film? Even at 139 minutes in the uncut Korda version so much must be lost. ![]()
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