'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Anna Karenina, the beautiful wife of a cold senior official in St Petersburg, travels to Moscow to save her brother's marriage, and at the railway station meets Count Vronsky, a young cavalry officer. Their passion grows into an affair that society tolerates only while it is hidden; when Anna leaves her husband and son for Vronsky, she is shut out of the world that forgives him, and jealousy and isolation drive her to despair. Beside her story runs that of Levin, a landowner who loves the young Kitty and searches for the meaning of life in work among his peasants, in family and in faith.