Dodsworth

source: Dodsworth

The experience of watching movies has got to be one of the great original adventures of the 20th century. What luck when we come across a movie that we may have only slightly heard of, if at all, and then happen to bump into one evening - which changes your perspective on life or adds just that little bit more of enjoyment into a life spent thinking one has seen everything! Such was my experience tonight with DODSWORTH. What an innocuous, if not, nondescript title for a movie which held so many delights within the walls of its celluloid chamber! How could I have known that this silly title would open up new vistas for me? I am not saying this movie changed my life. But how unexpected to have found ONE MORE GEM amongst the thousands of movies that I have already known and loved! Walter Huston was a major surprise for me. I had seen him before. But never like this. The same with Ruth Chatterton. The scenes with Mary Astor near the end are almost priceless. Talking about those scenes...one can only wonder how such simple dialog could elicit so many feelings from us? I say that Sinclair Lewis had something to do with its success. But let's not leave out the master - William Wyler!

Sinclair Lewis's novel of American morals and mores Dodsworth was first adapted for the stage by Sidney Howard. It provided Walter Huston with one of his best known parts, he appeared in the play on Broadway for 315 performances for the 1934-35 season. Samuel Goldwyn was smart enough to both buy the play and make sure to sign Walter Huston to repeat his performance for the film. At least his performance in this role is preserved unlike Knickerbocker Holiday. The plot concerns Samuel Dodsworth, successful automobile industrialist who sells out his firm to a conglomerate like General Motors and at 50 decides to get a bit more out of life, starting with a trip to Europe with wife Ruth Chatterton. Huston's a hick tourist and he knows it, so to him it's see the sights and get back home to his daughter Kathryn Marlowe and her husband John Payne who are planning to put him into the grandfather business. But the thought of being a grandmother frightens the dickens out of Chatterton. And when she hits Europe you can hear the refrain of that song of the returning dough-boys, How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm After They've Seen Paree. Their middle America town of Zenith, the location of so many Sinclair Lewis stories just ain't good enough for her any more. She goes through a succession of men, David Niven, Paul Lukas, and Gregory Gaye who flatter her vanity with affairs. She's ready to divorce Huston for Gaye once she can get clearance from his formidable mother Maria Ouspenskaya. In the meantime Huston's found a widow in Mary Astor who likes him just as he is. For the usually rosy cinema of 1936 Dodsworth is a remarkably mature and sophisticated story given its time. The film received several Academy Award nominations and won for Best Art&Set Direction, but strangely enough Ruth Chatterton was overlooked for Best Actress. I was more impressed with her performance than Huston's and he was at the top of his game. Dodsworth was up for Best Picture, Best Actor for Walter Huston, Best Supporting Actress for Maria Ouspenskaya, Best Director for William Wyler and Best Screenplay Adaption by Sidney Howard. Goldwyn was smart enough to get Howard to adapt his own work for the screen. After 71 years the film holds up as well as in 1936 and will be enjoyed by today's audience just as much as in 1936.

It is hard to believe that this film is 64 years old. Walter Huston gives a performance of depth and understanding. He is matched by Mary Astor. The acting seems much more 'modern' than other films from that era, and the story will definitely hold comtemporary audiences. One of my choices for one of the greatest films of the 1930s.

It is astonishing to think that this Sinclar Lewis film adaptation was made in 1936! Walter Huston is sensational as the retiring tycoon. He is married to Fran, played deliciously by Ruth Chatterton (a character who seems an early version of Meryl Streep's in "Death Becomes Her") Her fear of aging is beautifully drawn and embarrassing to witness. The rich American hicks in Europe are described with humor and compassion but above all with an uncanny understanding of the subject. I loved the structure of the phone calls from Vienna to Naples at a crucial moment in the protagonists future lives. Mary Astor is another standout in a performance of such modernity that one has to remind oneself that this was in fact shot in 1936. The director, William Wyler, was yet to give us some other milestones from "Jezabel" and "The Littlle Foxes" to "Roman Holiday", "Funny Girl" and "Ben Hur" For film lovers this is a must!

It's impossible to do justice to this work, which chronicles the complex breakdown of a long and successful marriage that cannot adjust to new challenges. Unlike many movies of the 1930s with high production values and a feel for old, glamorous Hollywood, the drama remains focused and disciplined. Aside from its subtle analysis of the end of a relationship, the movie does a superb job of contrasting the differences between the new, powerful go-getter culture of 20th-Century America and the more restrained, skeptical traditions of Old Europe. The movie in some ways represents a dialogue between these two cultures, which at time clash, most poignantly when an old Austrian baroness speaks frankly to the wife of an American industrialist. A great overlooked classic.

A critics' favorite, I found this a very annoying film. Annoying primarily because of Ruth Chatterton's character - an extremely vain, obnoxious person who cheats on her husband left and right and sees nothing wrong with doing so! Almost everything about this woman is annoying, including Chatterton's acting ability. However, some people like to watch annoying, nasty women, which is one reason soap operas have always been fairly popular. I am just not one of them, so this film is not one I would want to watch again. The husband, played by Walter Huston, is a good guy, but not too good. I doubt if any man would put up with all the baloney he did, until the end when he finds a good woman, played by a very attractive Mary Astor. I only wish the "bad woman" was shown getting her comeuppance more than what was shown. Huston, meanwhile, as he always was, is fun to watch: a great actor of his day. Being a story of a lot of people with loose morals, it's no wonder the critics all rave about this. They embrace the dark side, almost every time.

Some years ago, I read a short piece in TV Guide by the critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks, in which he listed ten 'great, underrated films'. One which I had never heard of before was Dodsworth.I trust Jays taste in films, so i decided to take a lot at it. I promptly saw it on Video and was enthralled.Once more, William Wyler reveals why he has to be ranked among the great Hollywood directors. Dodsworth is that rarity, a film for adult people. In addition, it boasts a literate script, fine acting by an superb cast, and an very fine design. One of the favorite themes of the fiction of Henry James,. the conflict between American innocence and European sophistication, is here explored with a concision and an empathy James only occasionally managed. In addition, the film is a profoundly moving love story. One can only wonder why this exquisite movie was not even nominated for the AFI list of great American films.

"Dodsworth" is a disarmingly honest and frank depiction of a failed marriage, based on the Sinclair Lewis novel. Its naturalistic acting and its refusal to make its characters anything less than full-bodied human beings make it feel way ahead of its time. It's never mentioned along with other classic films of the period--probably because it doesn't have an epic scope--but it should be. Walter Huston gives an absolutely flawless performance in the title role. His type is so recognizable, even today: the successful American business man who values the simplest and most traditional of American values, and who comes across as provincial and crass to the rest of the world. Ruth Chatterton meets Huston's performance every step of the way as Dodsworth's wife, glad of the material comfort her husband can provide, but embarrassed by him and aware that he will prevent her from joining the world of high culture to which she wants to belong. It is to the movie's distinct credit that neither of these characters is either hero or villain. Dodsworth is crass and unsophisticated; yet at the same time he's honest and never misleads his wife into thinking he's something that he's not. Mrs. Dodsworth has a right to be bored by the kind of life Dodsworth is content with, but she might have thought of that before so readily accepting his financial success. I don't really know for sure, but I have a feeling this movie might have made people very uncomfortable in 1936. I doubt married couples were encouraged to turn too critical an eye on their own marriages back then, and I suspect that more people than not decided to stick it out in unhappy marriages rather than violate a sense of social propriety. Before the days when people dated for a few years before getting married, many people probably learned about the kind of person they were marrying only after the wedding day. "Dodsworth" beautifully captures the sad, melancholy feeling of waking up one morning and realizing you're not married to the person you thought you were. Grade: A

Spoilers herein. There are several branches on the film family tree, the least interesting of which contains the films that are uncinematic: that are simply filmed plays. Many of these have collected the shorthand of `character studies' but that's not quite accurate. They are plays that define characters which then define or find their situations. Though uninteresting as films, they can still find an audience if the characters have traction of some sort. (Yes, Wyler had long shots and deep focus, but those are in the service of preserving the stage, not enhancing our eye.) The only thing this film has to offer is that the dynamics of the relationship between the two main characters (and only them) is not cartoonish. We have on the one hand a seemingly perfect man: a Midwestern tinkerer whose attention to quality and honesty built a relatively rich manufacturing firm. He retires to spend time with his wife. She on the other hand is a vile creature; a small person with money, someone whose only asset was some charm which she equates with youth, a newly rich bumpkin who aspires to aristocracy. In short, someone not worth air. We gamely watch as she jerks her husband to Europe, cheats on him, is forgiven and cheats again, only to be rejected by the mother of the slick baron, himself an opportunist. Other than some grace on Huston's part (partly invested in Mary Astor's straightforwardness), this is completely without interest. And that same grace is found better elsewhere (see; `Red Beard' for a more nuanced and cinematic treatment). Those who celebrate this film do so not for what it is, but what it represents. In that way, the film itself becomes like the wife: something that points to something else, something okay for a short while but in the long run to be avoided. I did find Edith's house interesting. It is remarkably similar to Grandmother Janou's house in `Affair to Remember' of twenty years later. By that time, Hollywood was making `character studies' that celebrated the promiscuous, opportunistic players in this game. Grandmother Janou, you will remember, played the exact complement of Edith Cortwright. Where Edith provides a moral `white space' Granny Janou (even from the grave!) prompts the romance of the male and female sexual opportunists. Same house, or a copy I think. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 4: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.