Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

mark.waltz Everybody expected MGM to release big epic costume dramas, but Warner Brothers, the studio of Bogart, Cagney and EGR? Indeed, the studio who produced "The Petrified Forest" and "Bullets or Ballots" in 1936 also gave movie goers "The Charge of the Light Brigade", " The Story of Louis Pasteur" and a drama with Kay Francis playing Florence Nightingale. Their truly big film was this glorious costume drama that is as luscious looking as any of the big films that both Thalberg and Selznick were producing over at MGM.Almost a Dickens theme, this epic costume drama takes its young hero from being dropped off as a baby at an orphan asylum to Cuba and Africa, working as a slave trader, and finally into the courts of Napoleon. Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland enter the scene 40 minutes into this nearly 2 1/2 film after a long prologue where Anthony's birth is explored as the son born to lovers Anita Louise and Louis Hayward and left to die after Louise's brutish husband, Claude Rains, kills Hayward. Later on, the 10 year old Anthony is made an apprentice in the household of his maternal grandfather and his birth circumstances become a scheme of intrigue involving the deliciously malevolent housekeeper Gale Sondergaard. Telling more would spoil the surprises and give away too many important details. What can be said is that other than a few slow patches (mostly the African scenes), this is a fascinating saga that remind me if the novels by modern epic author John Jakes. This swept the Academy Awards with three technical Oscars and a well deserved Supporting performance for Miss Sondergaard. The cat-like Faith is a n opportunist of the most calculating kind, wisely teamed with the older Rains who gets a laugh in much like the invisible man. March and De Havilland are boring in comparison to these two.Others who offer interesting characterizations include Henry O'Neill, Edmund Gwenn and Eily Malton. Billy Mauch is great as the 10 year old Anthony. Look quickly for Clara Blandick. It might be tempting to fast-forward through the middle section in Africa, but that is important to the story to explain Adverse's genesis as a character.

utgard14 "Epic" story of an orphan named Anthony Adverse who grows up and makes a series of bad choices that ultimately may cost him the woman he loves. Admittedly, that's an oversimplified summary. I haven't read the novel on which this movie is based. It was a huge best-seller during the Great Depression but has since been largely forgotten. If anyone ever needs proof that just because something is popular today doesn't mean it will stand the test of time, point to Anthony Adverse.On its technical merits, it's a well-made film of its type and era. The score is excellent. The film's strongest asset is a truly exceptional cast. Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland are fine leads with wonderful support from the likes of Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Gale Sondergaard, and many more. This was Sondergaard's film debut and she won the very first Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it. Some of the cast plays to the rafters but if you're a fan of '30s melodramas this probably won't bother you. Others beware. It's an overlong film but I can't say I ever lost interest in it. I do think they could have shortened the first twenty minutes that dealt with Anthony's parents and it wouldn't have hurt the movie any.

MARIO GAUCI For several reasons, I had always wanted to check this one out but it took me this long (specifically, the current Oscar season) to get to it: for being an epic from Hollywood's golden age, its winning four Academy Awards (including the first given for Best Supporting Actress), but also for its baffling neglect over the years (it has not even been accorded a "Warner Archives Collection" MOD release, so that I have had to make do with an old VHS-to-DVD-to-DivX transfer!); besides, while Leslie Halliwell rated it just *, Leonard Maltin was far more generous with ***1/2…Anyway, the plot-heavy film (adapted from the 1,200-page Hervey Allen bestseller) is encased in a beautiful production which, at the time, was the studio's longest and most expensive undertaking; it was even deemed important enough to have a behind-the-scenes documentary (certainly among the very first of its kind), ostentatiously called "The Making Of A Great Motion Picture", attached to it but which, sadly, is not available at this juncture! The cast list reads like a "Who's Who" of international talent, both in star roles and character parts: Fredric March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, Gale Sondergaard (winning an Oscar in her debut performance!), Edmund Gwenn, Anita Louise, Louis Hayward, Henry O'Neill, Donald Woods, Luis Alberni, Akim Tamiroff, J. Carroll Naish, etc.While I admit that the narrative is not the most exciting ever conceived and is, unsurprisingly, quite contrived (not least washer-woman De Havilland's – bearing the hilarious surname of Guisseppi {sic} – outrageous fortune in becoming an operatic prima donna and Napoleon's current fling, renamed "Mademoiselle Georges"!), there is no doubt that everyone approaches it with the utmost commitment. The result is thus rendered a good-looking and superbly underscored ride which manages not to slip into tedium throughout; no wonder that all these virtues (courtesy of cinematographer Tony Gaudio, composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and editor Ralph Dawson) were recognized by the Academy…though the music nod was actually given in Leo F. Forbstein's name, then Warners' Head Of (this) Department! For the record, it was also nominated for Best Picture (losing out to the even more inflated THE GREAT ZIEGFELD), Art Direction (the work of the renowned Anton Grot) and Assistant Direction (in one of only five years where this honour was bestowed).Incidentally, even if this has the look of a typical Warners epic – especially those directed by Michael Curtiz (who, reportedly, lent a hand at some point during shooting) and starring Errol Flynn – the feel is very different, because it stresses characterization over action: nevertheless, we get a swordfight early on and slave-trading occupies a good part of its middle section! As for the curious presence of General Bonaparte (among those who tested for the part was Humphrey Bogart!), it is worth remembering that he also put in a similarly unlikely 'cameo' in Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche" (splendidly filmed twice, in 1923 and 1952)!There is no point in going through its episodic structure, since it is so vast, or even its flaws: with respect to the latter, suffice to say that, while March (it takes him some time to find his feet here, but eventually settles down and rises to the occasion when required) and De Havilland's characters are supposed to be of comparable age, the stars' 19-year discrepancy does not come in the way of their on screen relationship (still, it does not lead to a happy ending!). Even better suited, however, are the two delightful villains of the piece i.e. Rains (who, upon learning that he has been left in charge of the illegitimate child of his deceased wife, gives the distinctive laugh that had stood him in good stead under the bandages of THE INVISIBLE MAN {1933} a thorough workout!) and Sondergaard; interestingly, too, neither gets a comeuppance here!

blanche-2 Frederic March is "Anthony Adverse" in this 1936 film that also stars Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, Anita Louise Gail Sondergaard, Donald Woods, Edmund Gwenn and Louis Hayward. Anita Louise and Hayward both have small roles as illicit lovers in the beginning of the film - she's married to Marquis de Luis (Claude Rains) and dies giving birth to a son by Denis (Hayward). The evil marquis drops the baby off at a convent, where he lives until he is 10 years old. Then he is adopted by a merchant, Mr. Bonnyfeather (Gwenn), who happens to be his grandfather. Bonnyfeather sees his daughter in the boy's (Billy Mauch) angelic face. This beautiful little boy grows up to be a blond Frederic March, who has been given the name Anthony Adverse. He's in love with Angela (de Havilland), an aspiring opera singer, but goes to Africa to recover his grandfather's fortune rather than stay with her. There he becomes involved in slave trading. When he returns, things have changed for Angela - and for him.The film is based on a best-selling book, and I have to agree that both the film and the book seem forgotten today, as is the director, Mervyn Leroy. March is wrong for the role - he doesn't convey enough charisma, for one thing - certainly Brian Aherne or Errol Flynn would have been much more compelling. March was a wonderful actor but he needed a strong director to get him away from being "stagy," and this type of role was never his métier anyway. The gorgeous ingénue de Havilland gives a lovely performance, but the standouts are the villains - Sondergaard, as Bonnyfeather's housekeeper and Claude Rains as the marquis.TCM gives this movie very high stars, probably based on the fact that it won four Oscars (one for Sondergaard who doesn't do much but look snide) and that it was nominated for Best Picture in 1936. The pickings must have been slim. This is a good film, with an exciting carriage chase in the mountains and some brutal scenes of slave trading, but it's hard to keep interested in it. Adverse isn't terribly likable, for one thing. It's the story of a man and how he is molded into a human being by two priests and a woman. It's a lofty idea that doesn't quite make it onto the screen.