Anthony Adverse

Fredric March, usually such a fine actor, was unable to give more than a wooden performance in the title role of 'Anthony Adverse'. Warner Bros. would have been better off using their up-and-coming new star, Errol Flynn, for this one--giving us the chance to see him paired once again with Olivia de Havilland. There are no sparks between March and de Havilland--he seems too old for the role despite clever make-up attempts to make him look suitable. But aside from the fact that he is miscast, there is a lot to admire about the film itself. For one thing, Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard make the most memorable pair of villains ever seen in a 1930s movie. The sequence where they cause a coach and driver to go off a cliff is given an extra punch by their dialog. "He was my favorite coachman," says Rains dryly. "The coach was rather handy too," quips Sondergaard. Giving other outstanding performances are Edmund Gwenn, Louis Hayward, Anita Louise, Donald Woods and Akim Tamiroff. Some of the acting styles seem dated, as are the titles that connect the time span. The best-seller was a bulky 1,200 pages from which the scriptwriter trimmed the story down considerably, excluding whole segments of the book and still ending up with a film well over two hours. Strange how the celebrated novel is barely remembered today. The opera scenes with Olivia de Havilland are interesting. She was a radiant young beauty at the time but could have used a better technique in her lip sync to the lyrics. Interesting historical drama of the Napoleonic era with Rains and Sondergaard giving the best performances. I've written articles on both of them for CLASSIC IMAGES, inspired by their performances in this film.

Hervey Allen (1889-1949) spun quite an elaborate, sweeping 18th-19th century yarn in the form of a gigantic novel, published in 1933, called "Anthony Adverse." It became a best-seller, and three years later Warner Bros. brought it to the screen, directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

The film was very long, comprehensive, and romanitc, in Allen's quasi-Dumas-Dickens-Tolstoy style.

Heading the cast were four of the screen's finest actors, leading players Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland; and supporting character players Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard.

Providing the musical score was the legendary Eric Wolfgang Korngold (with orchestrations by Hugo Friedhofer) and classic masque and operatic excerpts by Monteverdi and Francetti.

The 141-minute film today seems much longer than it is, as we follow Anthony's detailed "adventures" in Europe, Cuba, and Africa, with America targeted as a final future destination. The whole production, which was considered of blockbuster size in 1933 (and still looks impressive), emerges more like a historic relic that is occasionally pulled from a treasure cabinet, to observe and ponder.

The whole feel of the film now seems dated and out-of-fashion, but then that's what most memorabilia is. It's merely dusted it off, polished, felt for the moment, then replaced along side other treasured pieces from the past.

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.

I just watched the Warner Archive DVD-R of this movie last night. I want to say that it is a good movie and much underrated by the IMDb score of 6.6. It deserves at least a 7.6; I give it an 8.

It is beautifully filmed, the sets are gorgeous, and the cast of actors is stellar and does a good job with the material. Even the players with smaller roles are well-known actors, and they deliver their short moments with just the right emphasis. If you're an old film fan, you can't watch the movie without seeing a score of faces that you know and love.

The two main complaints I see here are that Fredric March is too old to play a convincing lover for De Havilland, and that the movie is somewhat pedestrian and dragging.

On the first point, yes, in some scenes the age difference in visible, but in others, March is made up to look younger than his biological age, and is convincing as a younger man. But the key thing is that March is *good* in the role. If you overlook the physical signs of his age, and concentrate on his characterization, delivery, etc., you can see he is acting thoughtfully, trying to do justice to his complex character. I think it's an excellent performance.

Pedestrian and dragged-out? Well, the film is long, as these epic-type films tend to be. Yet I did not find that my interest flagged. The film deals with years of the lives of these characters, and it needs to be long to get in all the complex background of European history and the changes in the lives of the characters (not to mention the important back-story of Anthony's birth).

One more thing: some commenters thought that Gale Sondergaard did little to earn her Oscar for this one. I thought she was very good. Normally she plays the sinister villainess in a very broad manner that telegraphs how evil and sinister she is; in fact, she was often hired because she was so good at that kind of thing (see her many Universal horror and mystery films). Here, she shows a bit of that sinister character, but underplays it greatly, to very good effect. She would never have earned an Oscar had she played the role in her heavy Universal style. I think it's the subtlest performance I've seen her give.

The sound on the Archives DVD-R is at first a tiny bit harsh, especially the booming orchestra with the grand Korngold score; this I noticed especially near the beginning of the film, and was worried it would spoil the film for me. However, the sound seemed to become a bit gentler about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie -- or maybe I just got used to it. But the volume of characters's speeches was definitely a bit uneven in the first few minutes. That happens, with movies this old. Perfect prints are rare, and DVDs reflect the imperfections. Overall, however, the DVD was quite watchable and the audio was clear and adequate.

I recommend this as a historical epic. Not one the greatest epics, to be sure, but quite a good one, and admirably executed. Maybe not a must-see, but certainly nothing you will regret seeing. I will watch it more than once, I think.

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.