Watch Ten North Frederick For Free

Don't Believe the Hype

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

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

Producer: Charles Brackett. Copyright 1958 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Paramount: 22 May 1958. U.S. release: May 1958. U.K. release: 29 June 1958. Australian release: 11 September 1958. 9,158 feet. 102 minutes.SYNOPSIS: It is 1945 and Joe Chapin is dead. At the funeral reception in his home at 10 North Frederick in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, his daughter Ann recalls the last five years of his life ... Goaded by an ambitious wife, Edith, who aspires to be the First Lady in Washington, Joe throws his hat in the political ring by offering a one-hundred-thousand dollar bribe to political boss Mike Slattery. At about this time, Ann meets trumpet player Charlie Bongiorno. When she falls in love, becomes pregnant, marries and then has a miscarriage, Joe protects his career by "buying off" Charlie and having the marriage annulled. Heart-broken, Ann leaves home for a book-store job in New York. Double-crossed by Slattery, Joe fails to get the nomination for lieutenant governor.COMMENT: A well-acted, but rather turgid and slow-moving melodrama. Director Dunne seems determined that not a word of his deathless dialogue be lost. Every word is meticulously enunciated — a stratagem guaranteed not to improve an already funereal pace. In other respects, unfortunately, Mr. Dunne is less scrupulous. He makes no attempts even to utilize the scope of the CinemaScope screen, let alone spice up the anti-heroics with dramatic and powerful compositions or imaginative camera placement and movement. His direction, in short, is stolidly uninteresting.Gary Cooper, Geraldine Fitzgerald and company fight a valiant but losing battle to keep the film alive for 102 way-overdue minutes.

While you don't necessarily need to love all the characters in a film in order to like it, a film has a HUGE uphill battle when you like absolutely none of them! While you hate some much more than others in the film and understand why the characters are essentially jerks, the overall picture is severely compromised by the writing. The bottom line is that I didn't like any of the Chapin clan and while the soapy elements of the film were interesting, connecting to or caring about them was really, really difficult.Gary Cooper plays a rich and well-heeled man with political aspirations. His wife is played by Geraldine Fitzgerald--a rather cold and conniving character whose one goal seems to be her husband's advancement. Sadly, there really isn't any love or passion between them--just what seems like a good working relationship. Naturally as a result of this, their two grown children are emotional basket cases. However, while you can understand how they got that way, neither shows any strength or depth of character and as a result are easily swayed and manipulated by their parents.Eventually, when Cooper's plans are dashed, the marriage becomes much more strained and the coldness becomes evident--as if Fitzgerald's character no longer cares. And, as a result, the same ambivalence begins to grow within Cooper. At first he tries to deal with by having an affair. Later, when he realizes how fruitless this would be he decides to just drink himself to death and wait for a slow death. Again, this certainly does not make for pleasant viewing. But, because the characters are so emotionally stunted, you can't even enjoy their misery in a voyeuristic fashion--like you would with a really sleazy soap like "Peyton Place" or even "Valley of the Dolls"s (admittedly, this last one is a terrible film). Overall, the picture is only mildly interesting, at best. Well acted but flat.

About 15 years ago my daughter (about 13 at the time) and I were surfing channels and got in on the last 30 or 45 minutes of this movie. WOW, I had to own it and finally found it on VHS. A wonderful movie. One of my favorites of this genre.And Gary Cooper had his own style. This was a bit unlike his other... But he played it to a T... Cooper was a gentleman, and his wife an overbearing witch. His failures result from his being too nice of a guy to make him into the man she wanted him to be. It was wonderful that his daughter found out that he had been happy. And even in that happiness he was still a gentleman.

I watched this movie last night after having not seen it in many years. In the very first scene we are told it is the year 1945. Then a string of cars are seen pulling up to a house. The second car is a 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan which of course did not exist in 1945.