Les aventures de Martin Eden

The first time I saw this movie was in the early forties, when I was fourteen years old, the part I remembered best was the line; you ask for a dime at a time, and then the fist fights as boy's and as men, life aboard a ship. And I always liked the acting of Ian MacDonald as a heavy.

Claire Trevor another favorite of mine, as the girl who was always faithful, and stuck with her man even though she was losing him.

Evelyn Keyes as the haughty rich girl as one reader said.

The girl who had everything, Stu Erwin is good too and the little boy whom I did not recognize,'till the closing credits rolled Dickie Moore. And Eden's goodbye to Raglan; he said a dime at a time and to me it looked like they parted as friendly enemies.

I had been looking for this movie ever since I got my first BETA-MAX VTR as they were first called(Video Tape Recoders)I got my copy last week and I've really enjoyed it. "Boompa" kingcody3@comcast.net

Glenn Ford is a sailor with literary ambitions. When fellow sailor Stu Erwin is found guilty of mutinying against skipper Ian MacDonald, the inhuman conditions which impelled the crime are not mentioned. McDonald goes to prison, while Erwin goes to jail. Ford quits the sea, to write, with the support of social activist Clare Trevor; meanwhile, the woman he loves, Evelyn Keyes, is the daughter of shipping line owner Pierre Watkin, for whom MacDonald works. Ford wants to become a successful writer, and Miss Keyes gives him a year to do so. But that's a tough course to manage, when he has no name, and tries to tell true stories that don't fit usual story-telling practices. He also tries to sell a manuscript about the mutiny to clear Erwin, to no avail.

Ford and Miss Trevor are terrific in this tale, even though the ending is unrealistically flamboyant. The copy I looked at was, alas, pretty poor, but through the murky print I could see that great care had been taken in art direction by Lionel Banks. With Dickie Moore, Heinie Conklin, Charles Lane and Charles Halton.

The quasi-autobiographical Martin Eden by Jack London is a haunting novel. The issues that emerge in the book give credence to London's likely suicide, in spite of the several protests of his heirs. The film here remains faithful to the story, i.e., a young man struck with the desire to be a writer and struggling with his own feelings of inadequacy and economic struggles. Glen Ford is great as Martin Eden, the rough-hewn genius whose work is plagiarized by a well known writer, Ian MacDonald's Raglan, and whose claims of authenticity are doubted by the woman he loves. Claire Trevor is great as the haughty rich girl, Connie and Stu Erwin does well as her brother, Joe. The film ends on a bright note, with Eden's success taken as a matter of course. The book ends on a very pessimistic note with Eden's suicide and his quest for virtue terminated. London's message in the book is a confused one, i.e., how could anyone know the real person under all that success and fame? Sadly, we must conclude London didn't know that man under his celebrity. Eden's life, like that of London, smacks of tragedy, while the film goes on with Eden living happily ever after. This film was made just before WW2. Glen Ford went on to distinguish himself in the US Navy, although he was a Canadian.

"Martin Eden" was not my favourite novel by Jack London but rather the contrary, one of the few I enjoyed and liked the least. The film is different as actually an effort to bring out all that is good in the book and give it a better conclusion. Although Jack London's widow approved of Glenn Ford as Martin Eden, I don't think Jack London himself would have approved of the way his book was altered.

It's a bleak and rather egocentric story of the struggle of a budding author who only finds adversities, disappointments and injustice in life and allows this kind negative realism to get the better of him, refusing any other way out than fighting hard against it in an uncompromising personal crusade with his life full of only reasons for bitterness as a self-consuming never-ending fuel. In the film Martin Eden himself does not commit suicide, but his admired idol and senior mentor Carl Brissenden does, when he finds himself betraying his own ideals of being true to the truth. That scene is actually the most interesting one in the film and most worth considering. The film is well made, being consistent in its rough hardcore brutality and dark and bleak realism, but there are other Jack London films as well that also focus on the rough and brutal side of Jack London's life and likewise fail to make any sucess. You can't make a success on stubbornly persistent self-centred fixation like some fanaticism of the ego, which everyone who bets on this horse never seems to learn. Martin Eden of the book ultimately commits suicide. Glenn Ford as Martin Eden in this film does not, and it might be a better solution to the story, but it is not Jack London.

Glenn Ford gives a rousing performance as the title character. This was still early in his career, before the actor settled into his more familiar low-key film persona. But his spirit here is well placed since Eden has to struggle against social forces far stronger than he. Based on Jack London's autobiography, the screenplay shows how narrow the literary parameters were in London's day. Fiction served mainly as escapism for the leisure class and was a long way from the kind of raw reality Eden sought to portray. Naturally, the moneyed class didn't want to read about how tough life was for the industrial workingman. Thus, more familiar types of literary realism, such as London-Eden's, were generally suppressed. This is an important part of the screenplay and offers a glimpse of the barrier certain kinds of authors faced in getting published.

The movie's central crux, however, is Eden's having to choose between staying with his working class roots, symbolized by Connie (Trevor), or ascending to the moneyed class with Ruth (Keyes). On a more abstract plane, it's also a contest between Truth with a capital T, on one side, and social position, on the other. Thus, it's also a movie of conflicting ideals.

Basically, the movie starts fast, sags somewhat in the middle, and rev's-up for the climax. In fact, the first part, aboard ship, amounts to a hard act to follow. Frankly, I could have done without some of the ritual brawling with Raglan (MacDonald), which seems added mainly for action's sake. Nonetheless, it's a revealing little film with an energetic turn from headliner Ford and a good glimpse of the literary world, circa 1900.