Watch Anthony Adverse For Free

That was an excellent one.

How sad is this?

good back-story, and good acting

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Copyright 15 July 1936 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Strand, 26 August 1936. U.K. release: September 1936. Australian release: 18 November 1936. Sydney opening at The State (ran 4 weeks). Melbourne opening at The Regent: 1 January 1937. Australian length: 12,573 feet. U.S. length: 12,250 feet. 15 reels. 136 minutes.SYNOPSIS: An adventurer sweeps through 18th century France, Italy, Scotland, Cuba and America and back, winning fame, fortune — and finally girl.NOTES: Gale Sondergaard won the year's prestigious Hollywood award for Supporting Actress (defeating Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy, Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey, Bonita Granville in These Three, and Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth).Tony Gaudio carried off the Cinematography award (defeating Victor Milner's The General Died At Dawn, and George Folsey's The Gorgeous Hussy).Ralph Dawson won the award for Film Editing (overcoming a particularly strong field: Edward Curtiss for Come And Get It; William S. Gray for The Great Ziegfeld; Barbara McLean for Lloyds of London; Conrad A. Nervig for A Tale of Two Cities; and Otto Meyer for Theodora Goes Wild).Korngold and Forbstein won the award for Best Music Score (defeating Max Steiner who was nominated twice — for The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Garden of Allah; Werner Janssen — The General Died At Dawn; and Nathaniel Shilkret for Winterset).Anthony Adverse was also nominated for Best Picture (won by The Great Ziegfeld); Assistant Director (won by Jack Sullivan for The Charge of the Light Brigade); and Art Direction (Anton Grot lost to Richard Day's Dodsworth).Despite a harsh review in the influential New York Times, the movie was voted 8th in The Film Daily annual poll of U.S. film critics.COMMENT: From its opening shot of a team of horses being ridden into the camera, this is a film that grips the attention. The story is told at a cracking pace and it is directed with tremendous sweep and vigor. The pace never lets up and the players make the characters so interesting, the sets are so attractive, the costumes so colorful and Korngold's Oscar-winning music score so grand (in every sense of the word), one is genuinely sorry to see the film finish. True, outrageous liberties are taken with coincidence and some of the events are downright incredible with sub-titles glossing over some particularly awkward continuity gaps, but frankly who cares?The hero lives up to his invented name. His whole life is a series of adversities taking him from one far-flung port to another. Fredric March makes a late entrance, but he more than makes up for the delay by his powerful portrayal. Although one does not usually picture him as a romantic hero, he is in fact perfectly cast. Despite the platitudes and occasional sermonizing of the dialogue, he makes the central character a figure of tremendous strength and sympathy.A brilliant roster of support players lend their weight to the sweep and vigor of the film's many arresting incidents. Among the most memorable: Luis Alberni giving his greatest performance ever in one of the film's most imaginative sketches, the story of the servant overwhelmed to a state of madness by sudden wealth; Claude Rains, a dancing aristocrat, one of the most rounded characters in the film, enmeshed by his momentary soft-heartedness into plotting with Gale Sondergaard, here giving a characteristic portrayal of avaricious, ruthless deception and deceit which won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (this was the first time the Oscar was given in this category — and it was her first film too!); George E. Stone, "the best servant I ever had", gives a most uncharacteristic and indeed unrecognizable yet brilliantly effective portrait of Rains' evil accomplice, Sancho; J. Carroll Naish as the French major who arrests Adverse; Rollo Lloyd, an unforgettably Machiavellian study of Napoleon; Anita Louise, the ill-fated Maria; Louis Hayward, the dashing lover; Edmund Gwenn, the canny proprietor of Casa da Bonnyfeather; Akim Tamiroff, the sybaritic Carlo Cibo; Steffi Duna, perhaps overdoing the evil facial contortions as a ruthless native girl; Addison Richards in a most uncharacteristic role and almost unrecognizable at first as a slave trader. William Ricciardi has a splendid cameo as the talkative coachman who converses with Adverse in front of a speeding process screen. Ralph Morgan's part is small and Donald Woods does not have much to do either (fortunately).Credits are remarkable. The film editing, which deservedly won an Academy Award for Ralph Dawson, is both sharp and smooth. The superbly atmospheric photography gained an Academy Award for Tony Gaudio. The sets are some of the most visually impressive ever seen. The costumes, Korngold's symphonic score, the snatches of opera, the sets bustling with extras, the tremendous style with which it has all been directed, the deft compositions and adroit camera movements forming images that linger in the mind — absolutely no expense has been spared. One's only complaint is that Olivia De Havilland seems a bit old for the Angela of the earlier part of the film — but she does make a charming Mademoiselle George (no doubt her singing voice is dubbed, but it's by no means obvious)!

I just watched the Warner Archive DVD-R of this movie last night. I want to say that it is a good movie and much underrated by the IMDb score of 6.6. It deserves at least a 7.6; I give it an 8.It is beautifully filmed, the sets are gorgeous, and the cast of actors is stellar and does a good job with the material. Even the players with smaller roles are well-known actors, and they deliver their short moments with just the right emphasis. If you're an old film fan, you can't watch the movie without seeing a score of faces that you know and love.The two main complaints I see here are that Fredric March is too old to play a convincing lover for De Havilland, and that the movie is somewhat pedestrian and dragging.On the first point, yes, in some scenes the age difference in visible, but in others, March is made up to look younger than his biological age, and is convincing as a younger man. But the key thing is that March is *good* in the role. If you overlook the physical signs of his age, and concentrate on his characterization, delivery, etc., you can see he is acting thoughtfully, trying to do justice to his complex character. I think it's an excellent performance.Pedestrian and dragged-out? Well, the film is long, as these epic-type films tend to be. Yet I did not find that my interest flagged. The film deals with years of the lives of these characters, and it needs to be long to get in all the complex background of European history and the changes in the lives of the characters (not to mention the important back-story of Anthony's birth).One more thing: some commenters thought that Gale Sondergaard did little to earn her Oscar for this one. I thought she was very good. Normally she plays the sinister villainess in a very broad manner that telegraphs how evil and sinister she is; in fact, she was often hired because she was so good at that kind of thing (see her many Universal horror and mystery films). Here, she shows a bit of that sinister character, but underplays it greatly, to very good effect. She would never have earned an Oscar had she played the role in her heavy Universal style. I think it's the subtlest performance I've seen her give.The sound on the Archives DVD-R is at first a tiny bit harsh, especially the booming orchestra with the grand Korngold score; this I noticed especially near the beginning of the film, and was worried it would spoil the film for me. However, the sound seemed to become a bit gentler about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie -- or maybe I just got used to it. But the volume of characters's speeches was definitely a bit uneven in the first few minutes. That happens, with movies this old. Perfect prints are rare, and DVDs reflect the imperfections. Overall, however, the DVD was quite watchable and the audio was clear and adequate.I recommend this as a historical epic. Not one the greatest epics, to be sure, but quite a good one, and admirably executed. Maybe not a must-see, but certainly nothing you will regret seeing. I will watch it more than once, I think.

I really appreciate Joseph Harder's review--as I have never read the original book nor do I think it likely I ever will. His insights are helpful in giving background for this film.ANTHONY ADVERSE is a film that is probably better quality-wise than the 6 I scored the film. For a 1930s epic, it is obvious that the studio spared few expenses and tried very hard to create a sweeping saga. The problem, though, is that despite all the efforts of those involved, this is exactly the sort of costume drama that I dislike. Now this is my personal taste, but I also feel that most modern viewers will also be a bit put off by the style of film. In essence, this film would have played much better back in 1936 than it would today.The film is the life story of Anthony Adverse--a boy orphaned shortly after birth. How all this came to be as well as his life leading to his eventual move to America is shown in the film. At first Anthony is a likable sort and you care about him--he really got screwed when it came to his childhood. However, later in the film he unexpectedly became a major jerk--devoting many years to the slave trade as well as practically abandoning his new bride! Because of this, no matter how Adverse eventually turns his life around, you can't help but either hate him or at best feel indifference. As a result, it's a very hard sell for everyone involved in the film and it's hard for audiences today to care about the man.As for the technical merits, the film is directed well, has many lovely performances (including Olivia DeHavilland at her most radiant) and has a fitting musical score. While the film was not made in color, practically none of the films of the day were, so this can be forgiven. It's too bad that the film is a bit dull and the character so unlikable--because of this, some may feel that devoting almost two and a half hours to this film just isn't worth it. Overall, I see it as a well made time-passer and that's about it.

Hervey Allen's great blockbuster novel Anthony Adverse, a major seller during the Depression Years provided both its leads, Fredric March and Olivia DeHavilland with some choice roles in their respective careers. The book turned out to be a one hit wonder for its author, but it certainly allowed him to live comfortably. Something like that other blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind did for its author which also gave Olivia DeHavilland an even bigger role in her career.Imagine if you will a Charles Dickens hero like Pip or David Copperfield born in very humble circumstances, but escaping to lead a life of high adventure away from the Dickensian settings of Victorian Great Britain and you've got Anthony Adverse. The supporting characters in the book and film could have also come from Dickens.Young Anthony is the product of an affair between a young officer, Louis Hayward, and the wife of a Spanish diplomat, Anita Louise. Husband Claude Rains kills Hayward in a duel and when his wife dies in childbirth, leaves the infant at a convent. The nuns give him the name of Anthony Adverse as the boy arrives on St. Anthony's Day and is a child of adversity if there ever was one.The grown up Anthony, played by Fredric March is apprenticed to his maternal grandfather Edmund Gwenn who does not know it as doesn't March at first. A sly and cunning housekeeper, Gale Sondergaard in her screen debut, puts the puzzle together, but she's got an agenda of her own which later meshes with the dissipated and dissolute Rains.March also falls for young Olivia DeHavilland who is an aspiring opera singer who also wants some of the finer things in life. Though they marry and have a son, both take different paths on a quest for material security and comfort.Anthony Adverse was a good follow up role for Olivia DeHavilland after Captain Blood. In both she's a crinolined heroine which she was destined to be cast as in her career at Warner Brothers. Still this part has a lot more to it than most of those she was doing at that time in her career.March was 39 when he made Anthony Adverse, still he's a good enough player to gradually age into the part. The story does take place over a long period of years, right into the Napoleonic era from 1773 when Anthony is born.Edmund Gwenn's character is pure Dickens, the Scot's merchant John Bonnyfeather (even the name) could easily have been Fezziwick from A Christmas Carol. Gale Sondergaard as the housekeeper could have been the bloodless Jane Murdstone combined with the vengeful Madame DeFarge.Sondergaard won the first Best Supporting Actress Oscar given out for her performance. It set a pattern of villainous female roles which she played until she got blacklist troubles in the late Forties.The novel was a lengthy one and Warner Brothers should have had something as long as Gone With the Wind in order to be really faithful to the book. Jack Warner didn't want to take a chance, but he did get a product that caught all the main points the author was trying to make.Even today with it's magnificent Erich Wolfgang Korngold score which also won an Oscar and its photography by Tony Gaudio, also a winner Anthony Adverse holds up very well for today's audience. Fans of March and DeHavilland should love it as will others.