We Live Again

This emotionally powerful, beautifully produced picture gives a delicious flavour of Tolstoy's great novel. Wisely this production gives the essence of the story rather than trying to squeeze all 900 pages into ninety minutes.

Watching this you realise that it was Tolstoy who was responsible for the storylines of about fifty percent of all pre-code movies. All those 'poor girl gets seduced then abandoned by posh boy' movies can trace their roots back to this. This however has a real twist that you'll never see coming. This also has a lot more depth to it than a simple 'boy meets girl and the world is a cruel, unjust place' picture.

What makes this different was this was set in Czarist Russia just twenty years after most of the population were freed from slavery. What made this so incredibly controversial in Russia wasn't that a nobleman had his wicked way with a peasant but the incomprehensible idea that a nobleman could feel remorse for what he'd done. OK, the peasants were free now but to treat them like actual people was a crazy idea!

By adapting a huge novel to a ninety minute film means that a lot of the back story and Tolstoy's philosophical points don't make the final edit. Also being made after the implementation of the 1934 censorship rules, crucial parts of the story: her sexual assault, her fall into prostitution and his dissolute lifestyle of drink and orgies now is conveyed by using the signalling codes of the time. Despite all these restrictions however it's still a superbly entertaining, intelligent and enjoyable film.

As you'd expect from Rouben Mamoulian, it looks incredible and the acting is spot on - although a little over-dramatic at times - but show me a historical drama where it's not. Tolstoy's story and how Mamoulian tells it really pulls you in. It paints a shocking yet stunning picture of Aleksander III's unjust Russia. It touches on Tolstoy's ethics, his fight for justice and even on his 'Georgist' politics (free enterprise, free trade). Probably because it's set in Russia, some Ill-informed commentators have said this preaches socialism and is anti-capitalist. It's the complete opposite! This novel says how capitalism could replace feudalism. I think some people are mixing up Trotsky with Tolstoy.

Anyway, back to the movie.... Fredric March puts in his usual reliable and likeable performance and Anna Sten is actually pretty decent. She's no Bette Davis but she doesn't deserve the terrible reputation she gained - I think people simply didn't like her because Goldwyn touted her as his own Garbo but she wasn't the audience's beloved Garbo. If you enjoy 1930s cinema, this is one of the best.

I have recently discovered the actor Fredric March, and so have been watching many of his movies. I must say, I thought it would be a good one, since Rouben Mamoulian directed it. I was right; this is a beautifully filmed movie. It is poetic, visual art. I personally did not find the editing choppy at all. I felt the story was a good one, and the actors all well chosen. Anna Sten was a beautiful woman, and a very good actress in this film, the only film I have seen her in so far. She was very convincing as a peasant girl; innocent,naive, childlike. She and Fredric March did very well together. I thought Fredric March was georgous in this film, young and handsome,dashing in those Russian military uniforms and long Russian shirts.

Loved his little mustashe too,but I did not like the beard in the end of the film. My favorite scenes were of Anna and Fredric together when young lovers; when chasing her through the field and climbing the tree, when they were at the Easter church service, when he comes to see her at her bedroom window... the scene in the conservatory was well done. But how sad to see that Fredric's military life has hardened him and made him a selfish cad. Thankfully, unlike his character in "Anna Karenina", he realizes his sin and makes his wrongs right. I appreciate the moral uprightness Fredric achieves by the end of the film. In summary, this is a beautiful film and I highly recommend it.

With Samuel Goldwyn as producer, I knew this would be a cut above average but I was unprepared for the jolt it gave me. This adaptation of the Tolstoy novel was made by people with intelligence and soul and it shows. Director Rouben Mamoulian and his team provide - by Hollywood standards, at least - an evocative slice of 19th century Russian life in this moving tale of a young aristocrat who under pressure from family abandons his populist leanings to pursue a military officer's career; he also uses and abuses a beautiful servant girl (Anna Sten), only to encounter her years later while serving as a juror at her trial for murder. His way of coming to terms with the situation is what makes the story great.

Mamoulian, ever the cerebral showman, serves up generous tableaux of Old Russia: peasants laboring in the fields, Eastern Orthodox church ritual, decadent aristocratic house parties – all adding to our understanding of the era and the forces that shaped it. The film is filled with beautifully staged pictures packed with information about that place at that time. Deftly constructed scenes illustrating the social divide are interspersed with gently erotic interludes between the major players. The ideas which captivated the minds of millions during the Russian revolutions of the 20th century are clearly spelled out in brief but pointed conversations among philosophical adversaries. Gregg Toland's ravishing cinematography serves the script, never going for the elaborate effect unless the effect serves to heighten the story and the point being made at the moment.

Anna Sten is notable for the honesty of her emotional expressions. Her reaction when she realizes that March has used her as a common whore is original and unconventional by the standards of the period. She was an actress of both passion and charm who was mishandled by the studio system and derailed from what could have been a major film career. Some say her "thick Russian accent" destroyed her Hollywood career, but no one seeing this film could possibly agree. Yes, she has an accent, but far thinner than Garbo's in Anna Christie or Grand Hotel. No, there had to be other reasons for her drift into comparative oblivion, and those reason are related to the unreal commercial hype surrounding her introduction to American audiences.

Fredric March was one of the better and more versatile actors of his generation. His moments of self-revelation toward the end of this film are masterfully executed. The supporting cast includes C. Aubrey Smith as an insufferably smug pillar of society, Ethel Griffies (the crusty ornithologist in Hitchcock's The Birds three decades later) as March's conservative and doting aunt, and the warm and homely Jessie Ralph as one of Sten's servants. A bearded Sam Jaffe plays a radical polemicist in a manner as sane and clear-headed as he was insane and pinheaded in The Scarlet Empress. Leonid Kinsley is very well cast as a peasant on the dock with Sten at the trial. It is worth mentioning that March played another selfish 19th century military man in another Tolstoy adaptation a year later – namely Vronsky in Selznick's Anna Karenina. This film must have been good practice.

While Anna karenina is just a story about adultery, We live again and Les Miserables is a powerful social critique of social inequality, the situation of prisons, retreat and the redemption of individuals for past failures. Frederick March was excellent in this film and in the classic based on the book by Victor Hugo. These are two very profound stories. Tolstoy was a genius

"We Live Again" from 1934 is filled with balalaika and Russians singing. If you can tolerate that, which is endless, you can perhaps find a kernel of interest in this film, which stars Frederic March and Anna Sten.

March plays a socialist who returns to his family farm, where he preaches equality of the people and romances a servant (Sten). However, he soon is seduced by the comforts of the upper class, with no knowledge of the hurt he has left behind.

Some time later, he is ordered to do jury duty and the servant has been accused of poisoning and robbing a man.

This is not an exciting film -- in fact, it's downright boring, particularly in the beginning. I watched it to get a gander at Anna Sten, who was brought over to the states by MGM with the intent of making her into a Garbo/Dietrich. She was very beautiful as well as a good actress, but it didn't take a genius to know that sticking her in this kind of film wasn't going to endear her to the public. She would have done better in the type of lighter film that Zanuck gave the actress Annabella. She appears to have stayed in the United States after MGM dropped her, married a producer, and worked in film and television until the mid-'60s.

Normally I love Rouben Mamoulian's films, but this one was a miss.