Uma Tragédia Americana

It's interesting to compare this precode era adaptation to the glossier seemingly bigger-budget production, 1951's "A Place in the Sun". People today will likely not remember the stars since so much of their work was done at 1930's Paramount and is never shown anymore. Practically all of the action is centered on working class girl Roberta (Sylvia Sidney) and Clyde Griffiths (Phillips Holmes), who wants what he wants when he wants it. Frances Dee as the rich girl Clyde falls for later in the film barely gets any lines at all as compared to Elizabeth Taylor in the corresponding part in the 1951 film. In fact the whole tale is spartanly told.

Clyde's past is filled in more in this film, along with more about his mother and the fact that she realizes she failed Clyde by concentrating so much on her mission work and thus exposing Clyde to all of the darkness in life with none of the normal attention and happinesses that most children experience, thus making Clyde selfish and hungry for the good things in life.

Clyde gets a break when he runs into the wealthy side of the family, gets a job in their factory, and ultimately works his way up to supervisor. But the family is more oblige toward him than noblesse, as they invite him up to visit them at their house - more for the sake of appearances than anything - and study him like a specimen rather than treat him like a guest. Through all of this, Clyde is stoic and unsurprised at their behavior. You get the feeling he'd do the same if he was in their place.

Clyde selfishly but not maliciously pushes Roberta, one of the assembly line girls in his charge, into a relationship and ultimately into sharing a bed, and apparently this intimate relationship goes on some time until he meets a bigger better deal in the person of Sondra Finchley. Don't expect the sizzle and warmth of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor here. Here Frances Dee and Philips Holme barely smolder, but that is probably intentional just to feed the impression that this guy truly can't love anybody.

Here Roberta is an unlucky girl that you grow to like as you even meet her family at one point. In Place in the Sun Shelley Winter's rendition is that of a clawing nagging harpy, causing you to somewhat sympathize with Clyde. Here there can really be no sympathy for the guy - he really is a coward, always trying to get what he can out of life here and now, running from the consequences, lying to himself as well as everyone else.

When the pregnant Roberta refuses to just disappear and insists on marriage, Clyde tears himself away from his summer vacation with his new socialite girlfriend long enough to plan a murder that will look like an accidental drowning. Does he want the good things in life enough to do even the foulest of deeds? Watch and find out. And you will find out, because what happens in the boat is clearly shown from beginning to end.

One very interesting moment in this film not included in the remake: You see the jury deliberate and two jurors are tending toward voting not guilty. The other ten threaten the two holdouts, basically saying that they will find it impossible to make a living in that town if they "side with that murderer". In the production code era you would never be allowed to question the integrity of the criminal justice system in such a manner.

This film is an interesting commentary on class consciousness centered on a wrong guy ultimately brought to accidental justice by an equally wrong criminal justice system. Highly recommended.

Originally this adapation of the Dreiser novel was planned by Sergei Eisenstein, during the Hollywood jaunt that also led to Que Viva Mexico, and his version might have been a cracked masterpiece-- one can imagine him getting all kind of details about the American scene ludicrously wrong, but finding a real connection between Dreiser's depiction of a weak youth whose desire for wealth and comfort sends him on an assembly line to murder, and Eisenstein's own mechanistic editing style and view of capitalism's destructiveness.

Von Sternberg, on the other hand, was the master of knowing sexual politics and intrigue, at his best with characters whose illusions had been left behind many beds ago. Given a Classics Illustrated-level cutdown of the book, and a stiff (if straight out of an Arrow shirt ad) leading man in Phillips Holmes, there's little for him to get hold of here, except for a few scenes in which Sylvia Sidney manages to convey the poignance of a poor girl in a bad spot, losing her boy and helpless to prevent it. There are some reasonably effective scenes between Holmes and Sidney, some nice chiaroscuro from Lee Garmes (though alas, even UCLA's restoration does not look as good as the clips I saw at Cinesation in the 1932 Paramount promo film The House That Shadows Built), and the courtroom scenes, though way over the top (not helped by Irving Pichel's too-perfect E- Nun-Cee-I-A-Shun), are dramatic-- it's fun seeing him defended by Charles "Ming the Merciless" Middleton, in that inimitable voice. But you can't really say it works, or does Dreiser justice-- and I'm not sure any movie could.

The problem with Dreiser's passive characters is that on screen their plights may be involving, but they aren't; we don't get the interior life that the novel gives us, we just see the story of an ineffectual sap making a couple of bad mistakes and getting ground to dust by the wheels of modern society. James Cain's crime novels took the Dreiser- style story and put guilt and cunning back into the main characters' makeup, so they have things to do on screen-- and they know WHY they're doomed. Seeing Sternberg fail to find anything interesting enough to work with here makes you wish Eisenstein had made this film, and Sternberg had had the chance to sink his teeth into The Postman Always Rings Twice or Serenade.

To think that it's the same actress who stole the show in the first version of the Dreiser novel,who shone in Lang,Hitchcock or Wyler works, and...landed in Tim Burton's "Mars attacks" where she played the "deus ex machina grandma who single-handedly saved our dear old planet! It's very interesting to compare her performance with that of the great Shelley Winters in Stevens's remake:they give diametrically opposite renditions:Winters' portrayal is that of a vulgar ,crude ,exasperating and even authoritarian woman,almost a shrew;Sidney's girl is exquisite with small eyes longing for happiness and love,a very delicate style of play.

If you've seen the remake before,you will notice big differences:the first one is the part of the wealthy girl:whereas Elizabeth Taylor 's part was very important in "a place in the sun",here Frances Dee does her very short stint,hardly 10 minutes,then they talk about her as "Miss X ", the invisible woman,which prevents us from comparing her with her more famous successor.Philip Holmes was surpassed by Montgomery Clift who gave more intensity,more ambiguity and finally more credibility to a character who is primarily a coward :there's room at the top ,but he's bound to fall because perhaps of his education.From that point of view,"an American tragedy" is more detailed than "a place in the sun" :the hero's mother plays a prominent part and it's finally in his last scenes with her that Philip Holmes transcends a rather monotonous portrayal.The first accident which he was not responsible for is not included in Stevens' version.

If Sidney is the main asset of the movie,its main flaw is the very long trial ,one third of the running time is given over to it,and the defendant's attorney's and the prosecuting attorney's histrionics are sometimes ponderous and seem to come straight from the silent movies .(Sternberg was an important director before and after 1929,the year of the talkies).It's interesting to notice that between 1930 and 1935,it's his only film which does not feature Marlene Dietrich.

All in all, Stevens'"a place in the sun" is a better constructed movie,a better remake,which has become exceptional nowadays,but at least for Sidney, watch this one.

Nb:both movies pass over in silence book one and don't feature the hotel,Hortense ,the pregnant sister ,and the terrible car accident which costs a little girl her life.

Like all the studios Paramount did not believe in idle hands. In between Marlene Dietrich projects, Josef Von Sternberg got assigned to do this adaption of Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy. Of course Paramount's second adaption of this story A Place In The Sun is far better known.

Paramount was never known as a studio which did films with a message of social significance. Interesting to speculate what the results would have been had this been done at Warner Brothers. Von Sternberg did do a good piece of film making. But the story died at the box office. I suppose the story of a man trying to marry upward to secure a better place in society and the tragedy resulting just wasn't of interest to Depression audiences.

Whether it was or it wasn't Paramount sold the next one with sex, the love story of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor heating up the screen. That went over big in 1951.

In this story Phillips Holmes is the ne'er do well relative of factory owner Samuel Griffiths who gives him a job in his factory, but keeps him at a distance socially. More than anything else Holmes wants acceptance from the upper crust.

At the factory he drifts into an affair with fellow worker Sylvia Sidney, but when he sees rich Frances Dee she's the ticket to all he's ever wanted. But Sylvia's now pregnant, what's a guy to do?

Dreiser's thoughts about class and class distinction are carefully preserved here. Yet in the most class conscious era in American history this didn't go over with the public. I guess even in those times you need a little sex to get people to the box office.

All the leads performed well and I also would commend Irving Pichel as the prosecuting attorney. This part was also a milestone for Raymond Burr who did it in A Place In The Sun.

An American Tragedy holds up well for today's audience which is also thinking about class distinctions and upward mobility today.

The first and best film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's classic novel of pointless crime and arbitrary punishment, the 1931 version of AN American TRAGEDY was directed by Josef Von Sternberg, who had just had great success with THE BLUE ANGEL (and who made a total of eight films with star Marlene Dietrich) and who captures the emptiness and isolation and desperate qualities of the characters well. Phillips Holmes, perhaps best known today for GENERAL SPANKY (the strange Our Gang feature film) is a revelation as the heartless, social-climbing Clyde Griffiths, and the young Sylvia Sidney makes a strong impression as the working girl killed in the "accident" that leads to the long trial sequence at the film's end, which is itself a classic of courtroom melodrama. Clyde is represented in court by Charles Middleton (who later played Emperor Ming in the FLASH GORDON films) as a cynical, grandstanding attorney. AN American TRAGEDY still packs a punch today and has a rawness and power and biting commentary on the class structure of society entirely lacking in A PLACE IN THE SUN, the 1951 film adaptation of the same novel.