Reading Cultural and Ideological Paradigms in the Hollywood and Egyptian Movie Adaptations of Tolstoy’S Anna Karenina

Amira Nowaira Text and Pretext: Reading Cultural and Ideological Paradigms in the Hollywood and Egyptian Movie Adaptations of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina In this paper I will try to shed some light on the complex and often problematic relationship between ‘original’ text(s) and ‘derivative’ movie(s) as the new productions traverse national, cultural and temporal borders, acquiring new meanings and significations in the process. The paper will attempt to examine the cultural and ideological transformations of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877, as revealed by two movie adaptations of the novel: the Egyptian adaptation entitled The River of Love in 1960 and the Hollywood movie directed by Bernard Rose in 1997 entitled Anna Karenina. In so doing, I hope to uncover some of the underlying assumptions and hypotheses informing these two very disparate movies and separating them from Tolstoy’s novel. Anna Karenina as an original source text thus becomes a mere pretext for the presentation of a very different set of ideological premises. In this paper I will try to shed some light on the complex and often problematic relationship between ‘original’ text(s) and ‘derivative’ work(s) as they traverse national, cultural and temporal borders, acquiring new meanings and significations, exhibiting more ironies, and finally re-emerging in a totally new guise, transformed almost beyond recognition.1 The paper will attempt to examine the cultural and ideological transformations of Tolstoy’s nine- teenth-century novel, Anna Karenina, as revealed by two movie adaptations: the Egyptian movie adaptation of the novel entitled River of Love in 1960 and the Hollywood movie directed by Bernard Rose in 1997 entitled Anna Karen- ina.2 In looking at these two disparate works, I’m hoping to uncover some of the underlying assumptions and hypotheses informing them as well as separating them from the original novel. Anna Karenina as a source text thus becomes a mere pretext, an excuse for promoting a set of ideological princi- ples that are virtually, if not totally, absent in the original text. Seen from this perspective, the novel turns into a site of contestation where conflicting ideological and cultural assumptions battle for dominance. 1 The vexed and often problematic relations between source text and movie adaptation as well as questions regarding the ‘fidelity’ of adaptations to their source inspiration have been ex- plored in In/Fidelity: Essays on Film Adaptation, edited by David L Kranz and Nancy C. Mellerski. 2 The number and variety of movie adaptations of Tolstoy’s novel are simply staggering (cf. Makoveeva, 111). 240 Amira Nowaira Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877. It depicts and addresses some of the salient problems of 19th-century Russia: an inflated aristocracy and an impoverished and huge urban and rural base, while giving voice to some of the teeming and conflicting ideologies, philosophies and controversies of the period. But it is the figure of Anna, rather than the ideas expressed through the novel, that has come to dominate the collective perception of Tolstoy’s work. This is not only due to her privi- leged status as carrying the title of the book but, I think, more importantly because her story has come to powerfully tickle the collective romantic ima- gination of its readers, regardless of their geographical location or their cultural affiliations. Anna’s story, however, is not the sole narrative dominating Tolstoy’s novel. Equally important stands Levin. In fact, one can make a case that the presence of Levin is crucial to our understanding of the novel as a whole. He is the introverted, philosophising man, the aristocrat with a ‘soul’ who, perhaps more than anyone else in the novel, represents the restless and searching spirit of immortal Russia. Without the presence of Levin, the novel turns into the unfortunate love affair of a disaffected aristocratic woman whose feelings get the better of her in this highly stylised and rigid aristocratic system. It would be interesting to see how the two movies selected deal with the double-bind created by Tolstoy, and to investigate the cultural assumptions and conceptions which inform and come into play in the new productions, concentrating on how the new messages are relayed and reinforced through visual representations. Seen from this angle, the visual becomes a tool which is manipulated for specific political ends. It becomes a signal whose power is immediate and should never be underestimated. The Egyptian movie Nahr El Hob, or River of Love, was released in 1960. It was directed by Ezzel Din Zhul Faqqar, starring Faten Hamama, the doy- enne of Egyptian cinema, and Omar Sharif before he achieved international stardom and acclaim in Hollywood. The movie was produced only eight years from the 1952 revolution, which not only overthrew the king and sent him packing, but also introduced vast ranging and – in so many instances – irrevocable changes to the social and economic structure of Egyptian society. The early 1960s are generally seen to represent the height of fervent nationalism endorsed and propagated by the socialist and revolutionary regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The movie also came at a point in time when Arab nationalism and unity were at their zenith, when the dream of political union between Egypt and Syria was still a reality. In line with the nationalist pride in Egyptian heritage and history, and as a tribute particularly to the ancient Egyptian past, the movie opens on a view of the Nile and a narrative of Isis and Osiris, which seems like a far cry from .

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