Dodsworth
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Actor: David Niven, Walter HustonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Dodsworth
DVD Review: "...Love has got to stop some place short of suicide!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Now that is an attention grabbing title, isn't it? The main character Sam Dodsworth so magnificently portrayed by Walter Huston flings that line in angry exasperation at his shallow, selfish, self-absorbed wife Fran played by Ruth Chatterton near the end of this film. I wanted to stand up and cheer when he did!
"Dodsworth" was adapted for the screen by Sidney Howard from his Broadway play of the same name, which in turn was based on the Sinclair Lewis novel. As the film begins Sam Dodsworth (Huston) has just sold his automobile manufacturing plant in Zenith, a city in the Midwestern United States for a very handsome profit. He is only just fifty years old and is looking for new business challenges possibly in the fledgling airline industry, (the time frame is the early to mid 1930's), but first he will take his forty year old wife Fran (Chatterton) on an extended grand tour of Europe. Sam is excited and exhilarated at the prospect of his first trip to the Old World, he is the quintessential American tourist, realizes it and is unashamed at being so. However Fran is an inherent snob, she fancies herself a sophisticated, worldly socialite and tends for the most part to look down on most of her fellow Americans abroad as provincial including her husband. They have very different aims in this trip, Sam wants to have a second honeymoon, see all the sights he's read about, and perhaps put some feelers out in the European business community. Fran on the other hand, wants a social network among the European café society and aristocracy, a new wardrobe and basically a fling, nightclubbing and partying with a variety of escorts some younger than Sam. Inevitably they drift apart, tensions build between them and burst when Fran callously informs Sam she wants to divorce him to marry an impoverished young Austrian baron, Kurt von Obersdorf (Gregory Gaye). Devastated, Sam travels listlessly across Europe until in Naples he has a chance meeting with an attractive, kindly American divorcee Edith Cortwright (Mary Astor), whom he had met on the initial voyage over on the Queen Mary. Seeing how unhappy he is, she invites him to stay at her villa, where he is mentally and physically restored, and Edith and he fall in love. However, the very day he proposes marriage to her, once his divorce is final, he receives an upsetting long distance telephone call from Vienna.
As Sam Dodsworth, Walter Huston gives one of the cinema's most outstanding performances, he is incomparable, and any other actor in the part is inconceivable. He's a true star, large than life, magnetic, but superbly subtle and accomplished in his craft to boot. This is a complex, multi faceted performance. At the film's beginning Huston is a very masculine, virile force, full of self-confidence, rough edged at times yet comfortable in his own skin, with an enthusiasm and zest for his highly anticipated new life. When the European reality turns out quite differently from what he imagined, Huston ably shows how Sam's character is steadily diminished, except in one instance where he exhibits a tough ruthlessness that works temporarily. With the collapse of his marriage he is a shell of his former self, he actually seems to have shrunk into himself, wandering aimlessly through Europe until the divorce comes through. Huston brings out Sam's rebirth at his stay in Edith's, his vigor, drive and self-assurance resurfaces, once again he's a young man in his joy of life. Walter Huston does it all and much more, this performance was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, and should have by all rights won, but he did make the winner's circle with the NY Film Critics who named him the Best Actor for 1936.
Ruth Chatterton nails the character of Fran, beginning with the affectedly genteel finishing school vocal tones. To Ms. Chatterton's credit Fran does not emerge as a one-dimensional cliché of the unfaithful wife. She brings out the pathetic side of Fran fancying herself a chic, cosmopolitan woman ready to take her place with the continental haute monde when in reality she is out of her depth, at heart just as small town as the stereotypical American tourists she scorns. This is a woman who deludes herself about her age, dying her hair a gleaming blonde, wearing the clothes of a femme fatale, refusing to return to America for the birth of her first grandchild. Yet, she is destructive in her fantasies, she wants a man she can dominate who will dance attendance to her, she has affairs with two pallid, cardboard Europeans with disastrous results, does her best to emasculate Sam, and comes close to succeeding. Her final comeuppance is deservedly earned, but even though she is so exasperating and to be blunt a bitch, you can't help feeling a twinge of pity for someone so vain and clueless. Her probable fate in a couple of years will be paying gigolos to tell her the lies she so desperately needs to hear.
The rest of the supporting cast, sterling one and all, beginning with Mary Astor who gives a lovely, compassionate, intelligent performance as Edith Cortwright, the total antithesis of Fran. Although it's brief, Maria Ouspenskaya makes a memorable impression as an imposing, glacial grand dame, the mother of the hapless Kurt that scored her a Best Supporting Actress nomination. There is an ersatz sophistication in Paul Lukas' anemic Arnold Iselin. Two future movies stars have brief roles but register favorably nonetheless; David Niven as the randy Captain Lockert who delivers to Fran a few home truths about her character, and John Howard Payne who would shortly drop the Howard as Harry McKee, the Dodsworths' young son in law has a very nice moment as a brand new father. Nods of approval as well to Kathryn Marlowe as the understanding, loving daughter Emily Dodsworth McKee, Gregory Gaye as Kurt, Spring Byington and Harlan Briggs, as the Pearsons, the Dodsworths' best friends.
William Wyler earned the first of his record twelve Oscar nominations for Best Director for "Dodsworth", and this film plus "These Three" also released in 1936 really put him on the map. The screenplay by Sidney Howard is excellent, literate sprinkled with occasional moments of wit and humor, again tapped with an Oscar nomination. Truly this is an adult, realistic portrayal of a marriage gone sour played against the clash of American and European sensibilities and morals. Infidelity and sexuality are dealt with honestly and directly without sensationalism, both in Fran's case and also when Sam stays with Edith at her villa. At first their relationship is platonic but swiftly becomes love and almost certainly they are sharing the same bed. Amazingly it passed through the Production Code.
All in all, "Dodsworth" picked up seven Academy Award Nominations including Best Picture, only winning in the Best Art Direction Category for Richard Day. What an injustice that it should be surpassed by the Academy for Best Picture in favor of the over the top "biography" extravaganza "The Great Ziegfeld." Unlike that film though, "Dodsworth" remains a timeless classic whose luster continues to shine, even seventy-five years after its' release!
Description of Dodsworth
One of the finest films of the 1930s, this classic Samuel Goldwyn production was based upon the hit Broadway play written by Sidney Howard, which had in turn been adapted from the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Ahead of its time in dramatizing the disintegration of a marriage, the story centers on the title character (superbly played by Walter Huston, who originated his role onstage), a wealthy automobile manufacturer whose wife (Ruth Chatterton, in her final American film role) desperately craves an aristocratic lifestyle in Europe. Dodsworth indulges her fancies to a degree, but their clashing desires--compounded by her affair with a European baron and his affection for a sympathetic widow (Mary Astor)--create further tension and mutual rancor. Dodsworth was perhaps the first Hollywood drama of the sound era that maturely addressed the complexity of a failing marriage and impending divorce, made especially compelling since Dodsworth is such an admirable and upstanding character who means well and upholds the ideal of marital commitment. Sharply directed by William Wyler, the film is as relevant today as it was when released in 1936.Bestsellers in DVD
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