MGM made the film to capitalize on its winning romantic team of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert who had starred in the 1926 blockbuster Flesh and the Devil.

Taking full advantage of the star power, a drama was scripted based on Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel, Anna Karenina.

However, producer Irving Thalberg was unhappy with the early filming, and started over by replacing Buchowetzki with Edmund Goulding, cinematographer Merritt B. Gerstad with William H. Daniels, and Cortez with Gilbert.

[6] The 1928 sound version featured a theme song entitled "That Melody Of Love" which was composed by Walter Donaldson and Howard Dietz.

During a blizzard, Russian count Alexis Vronsky, aide-de-camp of the Grand Duke, meets a veiled woman on the way to St. Petersburg, Russia.

He also tells her that the Grand Duke plans to cashier Vronsky from his regiment, ending a long and honourable family tradition of elite army service, because he is cohabitating with Anna.

She begs the Grand Duke for mercy and succeeds in persuading him to relent on the condition that she leaves St. Petersberg and never sees Vronsky again.