Dodsworth (1936)

IMDb


This 1936 best picture Oscar nominee was based on Sinclair Lewis's 1929 novel of the same name. Midwestern automobile manufacturer Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) retires, sells his company, and takes his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) on a long European vacation at her insistence. While on this trip Fran succumbs to European 'charms' and worldly ways (she cheats on him), while Sam remains his earnest, though kind of boring mid-western self. The movies popularity I think came from its frankness (Sinclair Lewis had a sharp literary knife for American foibles), and that it felt remarkable like a pre-code film in its sensibilities, but passed The National Board of Review apparently unchanged. This is a case where I must say I liked a film despite its often unpleasantness, these characters are in what's a pretty nasty, often petty situation which they are not all that adult about. Chatterton's Fran at first seems likable enough if a little naive and pretentious, even at first a little hesitant about becoming involved in situations she knows will tempt her, she practically begs her husband to do something before she succumbs, but fights him whenever he does. Sam Dodsworth is a much more moral person, but boring, thoroughly middle-American, and prone to sometimes misplaced anger and passive self-loathing when things don't go his way. Certainly the portrayals of these complicated, even modern seeming characters elevate the film beyond its time, its also one of a still minority of films in which after a point, you actually root for the main characters to get divorced. Elegant support proffered by Mary Astor and David Niven, William Wyler's direction shows his immense skills at the serious family drama just beginning to unfold. Grade: A.