The Version Of Anna Karenina: From Leo Tolstoy To Joe Wright

Since the emergence of film, it has forged an indissoluble bond with literature.The films adapted from classical literaturepresent a tendency of increasing in number, and every year some remarkable filmswith high artistic level win awards; therefore, the adaptation from literature to film has gradually become a hot issue in the field of comparative literature studies. The movie “Anna Karenina”, directed by Joe Wright in 2012, is adapted from the work with the same name written by Leo Tolstoy. It attracted attention from the film industry and the critics even after its preparation for shooting. After its public show, Joe Wright achieved win-win result on both box office and word of mouth. How did the film “Anna Karenina” stand out from its original work and many film versions with the director's unique style? How to realize the inheritance and innovation from its original work? What spirit of the age did the film reflect in the adaptation process of additions and deletions? This paper, based on the theory of narratology, tries to do parallelly comparative study on the similarities and differences between the original work and the adapted film on the story and narrative strategy level, and analyzes the cultural significance reflected in the adaptation process through the detailed text reading of the novel and the movie.The paper consists of five parts. The introduction part briefly teases out the research on the novel “Anna Karenina”and its adapted movieas well as the filmic adaptation theory of literary works; chapter one,on the story level, parallelly compares the similarities and differences between the fiction and the film in the plot, character and background aspects; chapter two analyzes different features of the narrative strategies, mainly including the prominent narrative level, narrative rhythm and narrative appeal, between the fiction and the film;chapter three analyzes the cultural significance reflectedin adaptation process, mainly from themost common human desire including lust for sex, power and material; the conclusion part summarizes the view of the thesis and points out where the paper needs to be improved.