Watch Peter Ibbetson For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

As Good As It Gets

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Okay I'm a sap but what a beautiful story of transcendent love.Based on a novel by George du Maurier, the story concerns an unhappy, empty-feeling architect, Peter Ibbetsen (Gary Cooper), who is hired by the Duke of Towers (John Halliday) to design new stables for him. Ibbetson and the Duchess (Ann Harding) are attracted to one another, and then find they have each had the same dream. The Duke picks up on something between them and confronts them, but the two haven't even touched. Peter owns up to his feelings, talking about a little girl neighbor he played with as a child, and that is the only love he's ever known.While he's talking, the Duchess realizes that he is Gogo, her childhood friend, and the two ultimately declare their love. Peter wants to leave with her. The Duke enters the room while Peter and Mary are kissing and a fight ensues, during which the Duke is killed by accident. Peter is sent to prison, where he discovers that he can communicate with Mary through dreams. Because of this, though he's tried to starve himself to death, and then his back is broken, he becomes determined to live.This is a stunning film that should be better known. Gary Cooper gives perhaps his most emotional performance, filled with passion. Ann Harding is subtle, soft-spoken, and yet determined in her love, and she is Peter's steadying force.A story of sustaining love that transcends separation and ultimately life, Peter Ibbetsen is sensitively directed by Henry Hathaway. It's the ultimate love story, and not to be missed.

I'm glad that Peter Ibbetson has been done as an opera by Deems Taylor because that is the medium that this strange story would most likely be revived. It's a sad and romantic tale that they wrote back in Victorian days, but would hardly make it today.Originally a novel by George DuMaurier, Peter Ibbetson became a play on Broadway that was written by John N. Raphaelson and starred John and Lionel Barrymore on Broadway during the 1917 season. The notion that people in love separated by man could be united and live a life in dreams would have found great popularity in that year with so many lovers and married folks separated by war.Two children played by Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler grow up to be Gary Cooper and Ann Harding. Moore and Weidler are best friends and neighbors in Paris, a pair of English expatriate families. When Moore's mother dies, his uncle Douglass Dumbrille comes to Paris to take him back to Great Britain to raise and the children are separated.Fast forward many years later and Ann Harding is now the Duchess of Towers and her husband John Halliday the Duke hires a promising young architect to do some major renovations on the estate and its Gary Cooper. At some point Harding and Cooper realize who they are and the memories of a bygone carefree childhood cause them to fall in love. When Halliday finds them in a compromising position, he tries to shoot Cooper who flings a chair at him and kills him.If all things were equal Cooper at most should have been charged with manslaughter. But Halliday being a Duke gains him celebrity status and Cooper apparently without a good attorney gets sentenced to life imprisonment. But as they are separated now, Harding and Cooper connect in their dreams each night and live an incredible life which of course means they never grow old.For today's audience Peter Ibbetson is a bit hard to swallow, but the players are so charming and sincere you actually let your cynicism fall away. The story is remarkably similar to the operetta Maytime and no wonder Deems Taylor saw it as suitable grand opera material. In fact Peter Ibbetson's one Academy Award nomination was for its romantic musical score.As good as Cooper and Harding are, I think in retrospect the film belongs to Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler. As the children Mimsie and Gogo, the film really belongs to them, you remember their performances throughout the movie as you watch their grownup counterparts.Oddly enough even with a French and later English setting, Peter Ibbetson's cast is mostly American. No one in fact is more American than Gary Cooper, but few also are have as romantic persona and a face the movie camera loved as it did few others. For that reason and others Peter Ibbetson holds up well even in today's far more realistic and cynical age.

While it's obvious that almost all the reviewers adored this film, I feel a voice of dissent is needed, as I have a different perspective. Although this is one of the loveliest looking films I can think of from the era, I was left cold by the film because I felt the plot didn't make much sense and because the characters were jerks---yes, jerks. To me, the film was NOT about true romance but blind infatuation and selfishness, but more about that later.The film begins with a prologue. Young Peter Ibbetson (played by Dickie Moore) looks to be about 5 and he is alternately playing with and arguing with the little girl who is his best friend. Unfortunately, soon his mother dies and he is taken to England to live out most of the rest of his life. However, the plot demands that this little infatuation with a little girl is not only NOT forgotten but so consumes Ibbetson that decades later he returns to France to try to find this girl. This is utterly ridiculous, as was his "accidentally" discovering this same girl, now grown, quite by mistake when he fell in love with her all over again (while not realizing it was the same person). Talk about straining credibility! But, it gets worse. The lady is already married--yet Ibbetson doesn't give a darn about the husband and demands that she run off with him!!!!!! So, they're basing this "love that will withstand the ages" mostly on the vague recollections of a guy thinking about life at age 5...and this doesn't seem illogical to anyone? Plus, now the lady is married to a wealthy titled man and yet this will somehow work out?!! When the husband finds out and tries to kill Ibettson (after all, this is a matter of honor and it is the early 19th century--a duel or simply shooting Ibbetson would have been the proper tactic), the husband is killed in the scuffle...and we are expected to feel bad only for Ibbetson and his lady love? I actually felt worse for the husband--up until then, he seemed like a decent enough sort. Sure, he shouldn't have tried to kill Peter, but can you blame him for trying to get rid of this shameless home-wrecker? Now, Ibbetson is in prison for the rest of his life. Now here it gets weird...very weird. Ibbetson spends the rest of his life meeting with and loving Mary in his mind--and she, too, can see and experience all these meetings along with him! There is no explanation for this odd symbiosis...it just happens as if by magic. And, when he finally dies, they meet in some external bliss together. Uggh--what hooey! These portions of the film are so sticky and tough to watch.So, the film is based on a love affair between two dumb and selfish people. Dumb, because loving somebody as a small child should NOT be the basis for uprooting and destroying lives. This movie is all emotion and no logic from start to finish. Cooper plays a selfish and mushy character who I had a hard time liking--not a rugged or manly sort of fellow, just a jerk.So why did I still give the movie a 4 even if I though I disliked the plot so much and felt it tried to justify adultery? Well, I gotta hand it to Henry Hathaway's direction--it was a truly lovely film to look at and it was very manipulative. Plus, the great sound track really pulled on your heartstrings (whatever a 'heartstring' is).

Sometimes you watch a film which is so good that you wonder why it isn't better known. Peter Ibbetson is such a film. It takes a concept which is highly original but undoubtedly 'out there' and makes you believe in it for just under an hour and a half. It also manages to be a truly moving love story whose basic concept,a man and a woman who are apart for most of their lives meet in their dreams,and it's message,that love does indeed conquer all, should warm the hearts {and shed the tears}of die hard romantics everywhere.It's a bit stilted as many 30s films are,especially at first,but Charles Lang's expressionistic photography immediately creates a fairy tale feeling. The growing love between the young boy and girl is extremely touching. When they meet again as adults,it seems like the film is going to settle down into being a conventional love triangle tale {she's married}. Then the film suddenly changes,and although separated the two lovers carry out their relationship in their dreams. The film is quite subtle is depicting the dream world,although there are wonderful touches,such as the fairy tale castle that she creates with her imagination,only for it to crumble when he fails to believe in it. As for the ending,well,you would have to be very strong not to shed a tear. Like much of the film,it's almost underplayed,and is all the more moving for not being over the top.Gary Cooper shows once again what a great actor he was in his early days {as in A Farewell To Arms},really making us feel his character's pain and joy,although Ann Harding is perhaps a bit too earthy for her role. Director Henry Hathaway was generally a solid craftsman,but here he shows real engagement in his story.A great deal of attention is paid to set design,look at the way for instance the pair are often separated by bars of some sort in the 'real'world. Also notable is the music score by Ernest Toch,suitably romantic,but quite low key and sparse-Max Steiner would have plastered the film with music,but would it have really been as effective?Peter Ibbetson is a wonderful movie, and deserves to be ranked with some of the more better known fantasy romances of Hollywood's Golden Age. I'd actually like to see a remake of this,as it's such an amazing idea. But before that let's have a DVD release,please!