The Art of Literary Adaptation and English-Language Film Interpretations of Russian Literature (‘Anna Karenina’)

This paper surveys the history of literary adaptation in Russian and Soviet film, then examines the issue of translation of a literary text into another language through film adaptation. It focuses on two recent English language adaptations of Lev Tolstoy's novel Анна Каренина by Bernard Rose (1997) with the French actress Sophie Marceau, and Joe Wright's recent version (2012) starring Keira Knightley. The paper will focus on the representation of Anna by French and British actresses, examining to what extent their interpretation of the role of a nineteenth century Russian literary heroine is informed by modern feminist readings of the novel. The central issue is: how successful can a literary work be translated into another language, and how successful can literature be embedded into a different culture.