Vivien Leigh in Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina is a 1948 British film based on the 1877 novel of the same title by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy (many consider it to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written). The film was remade in 1997 and again in 2012 (the book is in the public domain). Photographs by Cecil Beaton, 1948.