Tornamos a Viver

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.

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

I finally caught up with this film on DVD and it provoked a lot of questions that merit further research into its production history. I can easily see why it was such a box office flop, despite its high production values, luminous photography and fine cast. Although Goldwyn hired a slew of heavyweight writers (Maxwell Anderson and Preston Sturges among them) the script frequently gets bogged down in preachy rhetoric and as others have noted here, pro Communist theory. Anna Sten is extremely photogenic but her acting style is so emotive, I wondered if she believed she was appearing in a silent film. Frederic March gave a beautiful performance in contrast. The most interesting aspect of the film is its treatment of casual sex and illegitimacy, both taboo subjects under the soon to be enforced Production Code. I'm sure this film was never reissued after 1934 for that content and also its very left wing undercurrent, which may explain why the DVD print was in such remarkable shape. The supporting cast (as always in such films of the period) makes it a joy to watch. It is fascinating to compare with THE SCARLET EMPRESS (released the same year) and ANNA KARENINA (1935) An interesting curio and worth seeing.

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.

Russia-set costume drama from United Artists, Samuel Goldwyn, and director Rouben Mamoulian. Callow young nobleman and soldier Prince Dmitri (Fredric March) has an affair with peasant girl Katusha (Anna Sten), unknowingly leaving her pregnant and without support. Many years later, he encounters her again when he is serving jury duty and she comes up for trial on charges of murder, and he swears to help her however he can. Also featuring C. Aubrey Smith, Jane Baxter, Ethel Griffies, Sam Jaffe, Charles Middleton, Jessie Ralph, Leonid Kinskey, Dale Fuller, Richard Alexander, and Halliwell Hobbes.

Based on the Tolstoy novel Resurrection, what this lacks in script polish it makes up for in handsome visuals. Mamoulian was one of the few directors who seemed to recall, after the advent of sound, that film is a visual medium. Too many early thirties films are static, turgid gabfests, whereas Mamoulian takes care to frame beautiful compositions with striking lighting and visual splendor. The highlight here is a lengthy Russian Orthodox church ceremony. March and Sten turn in decent performances, but the film is hampered by a rushed telling of the tale, and a trite ending.