Anthony Adverse. 1936. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

(4/?/01-4/11/01)

Anthony Adverse is a piece of good old-fashioned moviemaking. It has a baroque sweep to it across time and space. It is a beautiful production to look at and admire and it is enjoyable to sit there in the company of old friends like Claude Rains, Olivia de Havilland, Fredric March, Edmund Gwenn and Gale Sondergaard. I think perhaps that this film is notable as a vehicle on which to hang the production values and performances rather than as a film in itself.

It's an old-fashioned story, something from a nineteenth-century novel. A nobleman's young wife has an illegitimate child and dies. The nobleman leaves the child at a convent and tells the world that the baby died. The child is raised as an apprentice by his grandfather who makes him his heir, except that the second in line for the inheritance, a scheming mistress, attempts to keep him from claiming it. The hero is separated from his beloved on their wedding day and returns to search for her. By the time he finds her she becomes the mistress of a powerful man--Napoleon, no less--and the hero leaves for the new world with his newly-discovered son. In between these events he goes to Africa and gets involved with slave-trading.

That's a hell of a lot for one movie. And, to be honest, it didn't make that deep of an impression, although it is an enjoyable film to sit through. I think it faltered towards the end when Claude Rains attempts to kill March on the road and when Olivia de Havilland becomes Napoleon's mistress. And the ending is a letdown. Anthony Adverse goes through all these ordeals and trials and doesn't even get the girl at the end. The ending does have some truth in it, I suppose, but somehow it just didn't seem to fit the film.

The scenes in Africa seemed a bit much as well, but I could see thatit was Anthony's coming to knowledge of evil, especially of the capacity for evil within himself or shadow side, and he comes back into civilization a more mature person. Perhaps it is even the myth of the "fall of man." So that part seemed appropriate after all to this larger-than-life canvas.

Olivia de Havilland didn't impress me as the aspiring opera singer, especially as her singing was so obviously--perhaps I should say blatantly--dubbed. Fredric March was earnest as Anthony, but didn't really grab my attention. Claude Rains was appropriately nasty as the villain, yet I could understand him as an aging man married to a beautiful young woman who doesn't love him. Gale Sondergaard was nasty and villainous, though I couldn't quite understand kindly Edmund Gwenn succumbing to her wiles. As for Edmund Gwenn, he had the most touching scene in the whole film when he is told that her daughter is dead, although he isn't all that interesting later on.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. 1932. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

(6/2/00)

It's riveting from start to finish. This is powerful movie-making. And it was made with a sense of outrage. This is about a man who was sentenced to a chain gang for a minor offense. Really, the only thing he did wrong was run from the police. He escapes and makes a success of himself, but his identity is dicovered. He agrees to voluntarily rerturn to the state he escaped from, having been promised a pardon. The pardon doesn't happen. He escapes again and at the film's end is a man who can only flee--and steal.

It's exciting stuff. It's even more exciting in that it is based on a true story. This film is the equivalent of muckraking journalism. And it points its finger directly at authority. James Allen's speech when he learns that his promised pardon was denied is pure rhetoric--but it is forfceful and scathing.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang presents a vivid and convincing picture of life in America. It is a raw, tough, down-to-earth picture. James Allen comes home from World War I. He wants to go into construction, but is instead persuaded to resume his pre-war desk job in a mill. He finall gives that up to follow his dream. But work is hard to find and he becomes a bum. This is "real life" with which 1932 audiences were all too familiar.

The life on the chain gang is a sharply-drawn picture. I remember in particular how Allen was hit for simply wiping the sweat from his brow. None of this is glamorous; it is all gritty and down-to-earth.

The most shocking part of the film is when Allen goes back to the chain gang voluntarily, believing in promises which were made to him but were not kept. It seems like a stupid thing for him to do, but this basically decent man believes in "the authorities." He doesn't question authority, even after what it did to him in the first place. That, I think, is the real lesson of the film--that belief in institutionalized authority is a very dangerous illusion. And it is stated with such a sense of outrage. This is a pretty subversive film.

And of course the second escape appears to ruin his life. After having spent a decade (or thereabouts) making something of himself he is unable to keep a job because someone or something alwys turns up. The final, pointed indictment of the criminal justice system are Allen's last words in response to the question "How do you live?" He answers, "I steal."

So much of the impact of this film is communicated visually. I forget the specific details that impressed me, but this is a very visual film. I remember one very effective scene when the camera dollies in to Allen's face at a crucial moment. But it is full of great moments, such as when he is told, after having returned to the chain gang for a year that the commission had suspended
decision on his pardon--indefinitely.

And some of the minor characters are wonderfully etched characterizations. Allen's clergyman brother who sits back and asks Allen to "tell us all about the war" is memorable as is the southern lawyer who assures him that he'll get the pardon, but that the clerical job they promised him "isn't so definite."

It is also worth mentioning how Allen is preyed upon by a woman who blackmails him into marrying her and then turns him in when he wants a divorce. There are a great many things to admire in this film, not the least being that heartbreaking final scene when he visits the woman he loves but can never have, then hears the sound of someone approaching and fades into the darkness.

I would really like to know more about the man on whom this film was based. What was the rest of his life like after that film came out?