Dodsworth (1936)

A Woman's Passions Emotionally Undressed

So, this is an incredibly depressing movie about an auto maker who retires and takes a vacation to Europe only to find they want very different things out of life. I guess there's supposed to be a love story in here but it just seems like a good digging wife alienates her husband, only to find he falls in love with another woman, only to leave her for his wife who was left by her rich boyfriend. I know that's a run-on sentence but I want to find a way to express...something about Dodsworth.


The perfect review

" Walter Huston lends a driving energy and a splendid virility to the character so clearly drawn in Sinclair Lewis's novel, and so brilliantly highlighted in Sidney Howard's dramatization of the book. Mr. Howard, who must be considered Mr. Lewis's personal dramatic translator, has adapted his play to the screen with the seriousness of an author who has studied his work long and has weighed each comma before fitting it into his literary mosaic. He was not, then, in converting his play into a pattern for a motion picture, lightly to be turned from his conception of its dramatic sequence, its characterization or its speech." Frank S. Nugent, Sept. 24, 1936. 

That review cracks me up! Nugent is clearly a master of obfuscation as he said all that without actually saying it! So I'll say it - this movie sucked! It's a very similar story as we see in September Affair, and my response was the same.
 

Then there's TCM's view:

 


Self-styled Siren has a different take

"(Samuel) Goldwyn always believed the movie was a financial disappointment because "it didn't have attractive people in it." (Come again, Sam? how closely did he look at Mary Astor?) But its reputation has grown over the years. Let the prickly, hard-to-please Sinclair Lewis have the final word: "I do not see how a better motion picture could have been made from both the play and the novel." Self -styled Siren


Fran Dodsworth: Oh, you're hopeless - you haven't the mistiest notion of civilization.
Sam Dodsworth: Yeah, well maybe I don't think so much of it, though. Maybe clean hospitals, concrete highways, and no soldiers along the Canadian border come near my idea of civilization.

RATED:
  Meh

WATCH IT AGAIN:  Nah

DO I WANT TO OWN IT?:  No

ADDITIONAL CAST:  Ruth Chatterton, and David Niven

Thanks for stopping by - see ya at the movies!

Post a Comment

0 Comments