Adversidade

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.

Today both Hervey Allen and his novel, Anthony Adverse, are all but forgotten, as is the 1936 Mervyn Leroy adaptation. Allen has never been granted a biography or a critical study( one could also say the same thing about Mervyn Leroy) while both the novel and the film are dismissed as over blown, prolix "white elephants". This is not entirely fair. Allens 1200 page colossus was the greatest best seller of its day, and was only surpassed when Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With The Wind, while Leroys film isn't bad. In fact it is pretty good, in its own way. First of all, Leroy managed to condense Allens erudite, baroque epic into the space of a two -hour, black and white film. In doing so, he managed to retain most of the novels elaborate religious symbolism( Allen seems to have been either a Lapsed, but still affectionate Catholic or an Episcopalian of the "high church " variety with a fascination with Priests, The Virgin Mary, and Crucifixion symbols), all of the colorful characters( Allen seems to have ransacked Tolstoy, Dickens, Dumas, and Balzac for ideas.), and most of the action.( the carriage chase in the Alps is one of the great "scenes" of thirties cinema). The film has also retained the novels plot, or most of it. One would not know, for example, that the hero ends up dying rather UNheroically in Texas sometime in the early eighteen twenties, or that the book has a truly bizarre, ambiguous epilogue in which "white trash" settlers of Texas from Missouri stumble across the statuette of the virgin and the ruins of Adverses estate.The great problem with the book -and with the film- is that Anthony Adverse is NOT a heroic figure. He is played upon, not player, a passive, frequently humiliated victim of adversity. Clearly, Allen wanted to make him a philosophical hero, not a swashbuckler. He is a clerk, for heavens sake. Most of the time, he is engaged in capitalist transactions of some sort, instead of sword-play. ( indeed, the only sword- play in the movie is between the villainous Don Luis and Anthony's father.)The basic action is simple. One Priest gives Anthony a mind,by teaching him. Another gives him a soul, by reminding him that slavery is a sin( Incidentally, the film is a powerful indictment of slavery and racism). Finally, Olivia De Havillands character gives him a heart, by introducing him to the son he never knew he had. March-a very fine actor at his best- seems curiously flat and passive in the role of Adverse. The truly great performances are by Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard as the over the top super-villains. Rains exhudes decadence, arrogance and sadism, while Sondergaard won the first best supporting actress Oscar, simply by grinning satanically for two hours.

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.

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.

Fredric March stars as the title character, an orphan boy discarded due to his illegitimacy, who overcomes much adversity throughout his life. He is raised in a convent and adopted by a wealthy merchant, Edmund Gwenn, at the age of ten. He learns the business, but is shipped to Havana around the time of the French Revolution. Before he departs, it is learned that he has married the daughter of a servant, Olivia DeHavilland. He is thought lost at sea by all, but is actually in Africa running a slave trade, with his heart blackening the whole time. From there, the tale takes many twists as Anthony must find goodness in his heart again, and DeHavilland may be the key. The drama is a bit heavy-handed and some overacting is present. Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard make great antagonists, and Sondergaard won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.