Anthony Adverse

Wrongheaded critics: There are more than one user reviews posted here including one that says the film should get zero stars because it deals with slavery. I think such an attitude about a movie that was made at any time let alone the 1930s is absurd. Are they supposed to pretend that slavery in the 1700s somehow did not exist and that many many people were involved in this trade? It's idiotic. The film clearly shows that there were those risking their lives in opposition to the slave trade and that there were others who were corrupted by the wealth and power that they gained from it. So to those pretentious and moralistic critics, I say get off your self righteous high horse and look at this film and all others in its proper historical context.

Hervey Allen's great blockbuster novel Anthony Adverse, a major seller during the Depression Years provided both its leads, Fredric March and Olivia DeHavilland with some choice roles in their respective careers. The book turned out to be a one hit wonder for its author, but it certainly allowed him to live comfortably. Something like that other blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind did for its author which also gave Olivia DeHavilland an even bigger role in her career.

Imagine if you will a Charles Dickens hero like Pip or David Copperfield born in very humble circumstances, but escaping to lead a life of high adventure away from the Dickensian settings of Victorian Great Britain and you've got Anthony Adverse. The supporting characters in the book and film could have also come from Dickens.

Young Anthony is the product of an affair between a young officer, Louis Hayward, and the wife of a Spanish diplomat, Anita Louise. Husband Claude Rains kills Hayward in a duel and when his wife dies in childbirth, leaves the infant at a convent. The nuns give him the name of Anthony Adverse as the boy arrives on St. Anthony's Day and is a child of adversity if there ever was one.

The grown up Anthony, played by Fredric March is apprenticed to his maternal grandfather Edmund Gwenn who does not know it as doesn't March at first. A sly and cunning housekeeper, Gale Sondergaard in her screen debut, puts the puzzle together, but she's got an agenda of her own which later meshes with the dissipated and dissolute Rains.

March also falls for young Olivia DeHavilland who is an aspiring opera singer who also wants some of the finer things in life. Though they marry and have a son, both take different paths on a quest for material security and comfort.

Anthony Adverse was a good follow up role for Olivia DeHavilland after Captain Blood. In both she's a crinolined heroine which she was destined to be cast as in her career at Warner Brothers. Still this part has a lot more to it than most of those she was doing at that time in her career.

March was 39 when he made Anthony Adverse, still he's a good enough player to gradually age into the part. The story does take place over a long period of years, right into the Napoleonic era from 1773 when Anthony is born.

Edmund Gwenn's character is pure Dickens, the Scot's merchant John Bonnyfeather (even the name) could easily have been Fezziwick from A Christmas Carol. Gale Sondergaard as the housekeeper could have been the bloodless Jane Murdstone combined with the vengeful Madame DeFarge.

Sondergaard won the first Best Supporting Actress Oscar given out for her performance. It set a pattern of villainous female roles which she played until she got blacklist troubles in the late Forties.

The novel was a lengthy one and Warner Brothers should have had something as long as Gone With the Wind in order to be really faithful to the book. Jack Warner didn't want to take a chance, but he did get a product that caught all the main points the author was trying to make.

Even today with it's magnificent Erich Wolfgang Korngold score which also won an Oscar and its photography by Tony Gaudio, also a winner Anthony Adverse holds up very well for today's audience. Fans of March and DeHavilland should love it as will others.

I have not read the largely forgotten book on which this movie is based.

My favorite films are from the early 30's to the mid 40's. The cast in this film is stellar, including some of my favorite leads and supporting actors. I love costume dramas and adventures set in exotic places. However, with all of those factors to prejudice me in favor of Anthony Adverse, I was hugely disappointed.

The plot seems okay. The sets and costumes are excellent. The cast, as I already mentioned, is stellar (in the credits!). The score seems appropriate. The expensive production shows throughout. The reason this film is so unsatisfying is rather puzzling. I think it may be one of those times everybody from the director on down was simply going through the motions. Hard to believe, given the cast. But they all seem so - not just two-dimensional, but - lifeless. Perhaps, as one other reviewer suggests, this film would have been better if de Havilland had been teamed with Errol Flynn instead of Frederic March. I don't remember seeing Flynn ever give a less than energetic performance.

Frederic March, one of America's greats, fails to create a character that I could like, sympathize with or root for with any enthusiasm. In fact enthusiasm is what he seems to lack in this role. Olivia de Havilland is somewhat better, but this is one of her least impressive performances. Gale Sondergaard did very little to receive an academy award. The appearances of Louis Heyward and Anita Louise are entirely too short. I like both, and I would have liked more of them and less of March and de Havilland. Perhaps they should have reversed roles...

Edmund Gwenn delivers a typically endearing performance in a typical Edmund Gwenn role. Henry O'Neill is usually very interesting, because he plays both sides of the fence - both good and bad guys. Here, his father Xavier is far more enjoyable than Pedro De Cordoba's Father Francoise.

The only bright spot in this under-achieving ensemble is Claude Rains. He, too, plays both good and bad guys. Here he is an aristocratic charmer and schemer - despicable and deceitful. He is great! In the scene where he laughs demonically, he sends a chill up my spine. Thank you, Mr. Rains, for delivering a great, under-appreciated performance, in an otherwise deservedly forgotten film.

At film's end, I felt like I had read a 1200 page novel - and simultaneously like I had no interest in reading THIS one.

I rented a tape of Anthony Adverse mainly to see what kind of performance the Academy was looking for in the first-awarded "best supporting actress" category. Gale Sondergaard's time on camera was actually quite brief and her villainous role required a strictly one-dimensional reading. There were no subtleties whatsoever, nor was there any need in the film for them. Ordinarily, it might seem surprising that her part would receive any attention at all, not to mention a prestigious award, but keeping in mind that Oscars in those days were to a large extent self-congratulatory spectacles passed around from studio to studio year by year, it really isn't surprising.

The film was long and episodic, as was the novel, and not particularly good at that. There was the glitz we've come to expect of course with the duels and chases thrown in for good measure. I kept wondering if the novel was written with Hollywood in mind. It's hardly readable nowadays. As far as directorial touches are concerned, it's no wonder that Mervyn LeRoy has long disappeared from anyone's pantheon. The kiddie-car version of France must have excited the Depression audiences. The film is very long and very expensive so perhaps there's something to say about that.

Frederic March is "Anthony Adverse" in this 1936 film that also stars Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, Anita Louise Gail Sondergaard, Donald Woods, Edmund Gwenn and Louis Hayward.

Anita Louise and Hayward both have small roles as illicit lovers in the beginning of the film - she's married to Marquis de Luis (Claude Rains) and dies giving birth to a son by Denis (Hayward). The evil marquis drops the baby off at a convent, where he lives until he is 10 years old. Then he is adopted by a merchant, Mr. Bonnyfeather (Gwenn), who happens to be his grandfather.

Bonnyfeather sees his daughter in the boy's (Billy Mauch) angelic face. This beautiful little boy grows up to be a blond Frederic March, who has been given the name Anthony Adverse. He's in love with Angela (de Havilland), an aspiring opera singer, but goes to Africa to recover his grandfather's fortune rather than stay with her. There he becomes involved in slave trading. When he returns, things have changed for Angela - and for him.

The film is based on a best-selling book, and I have to agree that both the film and the book seem forgotten today, as is the director, Mervyn Leroy. March is wrong for the role - he doesn't convey enough charisma, for one thing - certainly Brian Aherne or Errol Flynn would have been much more compelling. March was a wonderful actor but he needed a strong director to get him away from being "stagy," and this type of role was never his métier anyway.

The gorgeous ingénue de Havilland gives a lovely performance, but the standouts are the villains - Sondergaard, as Bonnyfeather's housekeeper and Claude Rains as the marquis.

TCM gives this movie very high stars, probably based on the fact that it won four Oscars (one for Sondergaard who doesn't do much but look snide) and that it was nominated for Best Picture in 1936. The pickings must have been slim.

This is a good film, with an exciting carriage chase in the mountains and some brutal scenes of slave trading, but it's hard to keep interested in it. Adverse isn't terribly likable, for one thing. It's the story of a man and how he is molded into a human being by two priests and a woman. It's a lofty idea that doesn't quite make it onto the screen.