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Post by galacticgirrrl on Mar 19, 2023 20:47:37 GMT
Yes! I forgot how wonderful the ending is!
How could you forget - FF posted a giant spoiler GIF of it earlier!!! <winkie winkie roll eye>
I am the type of person to often always read the ending of a book first so of course I didn't mind at all FF.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 19, 2023 20:57:55 GMT
Yes! I forgot how wonderful the ending is!
How could you forget - FF posted a giant spoiler GIF of it earlier!!! <winkie winkie roll eye>
I am the type of person to often always read the ending of a book first so of course I didn't mind at all FF. I'm sorry if it was a spoiler as I thought about that before I posted it, but I saw it as just a character waving and the credits. To be sure, if you know the movie, you know what it means, but if not, I didn't see it as a spoiler.
That said, I'll be more careful in the future.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Mar 19, 2023 21:02:41 GMT
That said, I'll be more careful in the future. Noooooooo! It was fun. It may be what made me tune in, reminded me of how much I love Mary Astor the movie! The face that could launch a thousand ships...and in this case, just the right little punt under sail.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 19, 2023 21:22:41 GMT
That said, I'll be more careful in the future. Noooooooo! It was fun. It may be what made me tune in, reminded me of how much I love Mary Astor the movie! The face that could launch a thousand ships...and in this case, just the right little punt under sail. I'm glad as my intent in posting the GIF was to garner attention.
So glad you joined us.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 21, 2023 9:23:15 GMT
Having enjoyed Andrea's showing of Dodsworth on this past "Sunday Live: Don't Be So Melodramatic!", I wrote the following comments yesterday. If you haven't joined us for a "Sunday Live" yet, give one a shot as we have a lot of fun watching and commenting on the movies.
Dodsworth from 1936 with Ruth Chatterton, Walter Huston, lovely Mary Astor, David Niven, Paul Lukas, Maria Ouspenskaya and John Payne
To understand Dodsworth, you have to understand that the then twenty-year-old marriage at the center of the story started with a middle-aged man marrying a young girl.
That young girl is now in her forties; her husband has just sold his automobile company; he's set to retire and their married daughter will soon be giving birth to their first grandchild.
Walter Huston plays the retiring auto magnate who sees this new phase of life as a time to "slow down;" whereas, his wife, played by Ruth Chatterton, is not at all ready to "slow down."
She's having a midlife crisis and wants to "speed up" her life by joining the young international society set when she and her husband embark on a European tour.
Huston, a kind husband, tries to give his wife what she wants, but he is congenitally not able to participate in the silly sport of putting on airs, nor is he interested in the gossip and game playing of that clique.
Chatterton is excited to put her and her husband's "provincial town" of Zenith behind her, but as their trip goes on, she discovers that might mean putting her husband behind her, too, as she drifts, with more intent as time goes by, into more affairs.
From here, the movie is Chatterton having a series of affairs - with lovers played by David Niven (young and English suave), Paul Lukas (cultured European) and Gregory Gaye (titled and aristocratic), while actively pushing her husband away from her.
Huston is a more understanding husband than most. He gets that his wife is younger than he and that she is fighting getting older, but her affairs and her new obnoxiously faux class condescension is becoming too much for him.
Chatterton finally asks Huston for a divorce so that she can marry her titled German with a tough-as-nails Teutonic mother, played by the wonderful actress Maria Ouspenskaya. Mama, to Chatterton's dismay, has other plans for her son.
Huston, now going through the divorce ritual, is a bit lost until he re-encounters a "drifting around Europe" American woman played by lovely Mary Astor.
Astor appreciates Huston in a way Chatterton never did, even inspiring Huston to take on a new challenge in business, which it becomes obvious, will keep him young. After watching Huston genuflect to his spoiled wife all movie, his relationship with Astor is refreshing.
Just when all is good with those two, though, Chatterton, having been knocked back on her heels by Mama Ouspenskaya, drops the divorce and comes to reclaim Huston.
Will Huston, a man of honor, take Chatterton back and give up lovely Mary Astor or will he, finally, move on from his spoiled wife and choose his own happiness?
It is the engaging performances of these three principals that bring this story, based on a Sinclair Lewis novel, to life.
Huston is wonderful playing a decent and honest Midwest man who still has some grit and fight in him, but who only uses it when absolutely necessary. You felt his wounded pride and broken heart time and again.
Chatterton is equally good as the selfish and spoiled woman who is arrogant and insecure at the same time. Her nervously fast dialogue delivery, only when she is scared or contrite, is wonderfully nuanced acting.
Mary Astor portrays charm and kindness without becoming treacly. She, like Huston, shows some punch when fighting to keep him from going back to Chatterton. She's equally moving when quietly but poignantly expressing hurt when she thinks she will lose him.
Dodsworth is impressive 1930s movie making. The sets are clearly sets, but in a beautiful "dream-factory" way that places most of the story in a lovely world of pretty European make believe.
Director William Wyler paced his movie well by neither rushing the story along nor letting what is, effectively, a one-note plot get bogged down. It helps that he had an incredibly talented cast which includes actors like Nivens and John Payne popping up in small roles.
Dodsworth is a sweeping story about a small matter: will a wealthy couple's marriage survive a wife's midlife crisis? No one is dying; no one is going to jail and no one will be poor whether the husband and wife get back together or not.
The Depression is impoverishing America (and much of the world), but movie goers in the 1930s showed an incredible desire to see how the few remaining rich messed up their comfortable lives with extra-marital affairs.
It's escapism for the ten-cent price of a ticket and Hollywood was glad to accommodate it with lavish productions like Dodsworth, which even today, owing to its talented writing, directing and acting, is still entertaining viewing.
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Post by sagebrush on Mar 21, 2023 10:56:17 GMT
Someday I'll get to join in these "live discussions" of a film if I ever get home from work early enough, but the comments are just as fun to read afterward!
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Post by topbilled on Mar 21, 2023 14:55:19 GMT
I liked reading Fading Fast's review of DODSWORTH. He definitely wrote more favorably than I would have.
While I think it's a highly engaging film, it's definitely a classic, I don't care for how slanted the writing is and that the woman is demonized while the man's faults are entirely overlooked. In my opinion, it lacks balance.
Also I think Sam is becoming just as self-absorbed in the end as Fran was, claiming his own so-called independence and seeking happiness through an extramarital relationship, the same way she did earlier in the movie.
I feel it is not a completed story, and that if there was another act, we'd see him eventually realize he can't stay abroad with Edith, and that he'd also come to his senses the way Fran did and go back to Zenith.
The movie concentrates on Fran's follies, but I think it ends on Sam's follies, which are dressed up as happy-ever-after because the filmmakers were men who were damning the affairs of women, but justifying the affairs of men. So the whole thing leaves a suspiciously foul taste in my cinematic mouth.
I can appreciate the talent and fine craftsmanship of the film, but I don't exactly buy its thesis and what it is trying to put over on the audience.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 21, 2023 15:48:09 GMT
I liked reading Fading Fast's review of DODSWORTH. He definitely wrote more favorably than I would have.
While I think it's a highly engaging film, it's definitely a classic, I don't care for how slanted the writing is and that the woman is demonized while the man's faults are entirely overlooked. In my opinion, it lacks balance.
Also I think Sam is becoming just as self-absorbed in the end as Fran was, claiming his own so-called independence and seeking happiness through an extramarital relationship, the same way she did earlier in the movie.
I feel it is not a completed story, and that if there was another act, we'd see him eventually realize he can't stay abroad with Edith, and that he'd also come to his senses the way Fran did and go back to Zenith.
The movie concentrates on Fran's follies, but I think it ends on Sam's follies, which are dressed up as happy-ever-after because the filmmakers were men who were damning the affairs of women, but justifying the affairs of men. So the whole thing leaves a suspiciously foul taste in my cinematic mouth.
I can appreciate the talent and fine craftsmanship of the film, but I don't exactly buy its thesis and what it is trying to put over on the audience. I respect that view, but I don't see "Dodsworth" as a movie trying to make a bigger point about men and women; I think it was simply showing this one specific man and this one specific women in a failing marriage.
I'd have to see it again to be certain, but I also don't think Sam started his affair with Mary Astor's character until Sam's wife had told him she was filing for divorce, so I don't think his "affair" is really an affair - like his wife's several affairs clearly were - since it only happened after his wife effectively left him and told him she was going to marry another man. That's why I don't think the filmmakers were saying it was okay for a man but not a woman to have an affair.
That's also why I don't see his behavior at the end as being his "follies" and as being equivalent to his wife's as, again, his new behavior only started after she said she wanted a divorce. At that point, he had to find a new life for himself. It perfectly fit his character, an auto magnate, to want to get into business again after his hiatus from work.
To the man-woman thing, I don't think several of the men - Niven, Lukas and Gaye - were presented in a particularly flattering light.
To be sure, if one sees author Lewis and the movie makers as using this one couple - this insanely rare couple of a super-wealthy auto magnate and his middle-aged wife retiring and traveling abroad in luxury for months in the Depression - as a statement on the roles of men and woman in society in general, then I would agree with much of what you are saying as Fran is an aggressively unflattering representation of women.
The movie and plot just didn't resonate that way with me as, as noted, it came across to me as a story about a very atypical couple whose long marriage falls apart. I felt Lewis was placing the lens very close to this marriage and not trying to make a bigger statement about society.
Similarly, looking at another of our Sunday movies, "The Country Girl," even though Grace Kelly's character was nearly a Christ-like figure in that one and Crosby's and Holden's characters were horribly passively aggressive and bullying men, respectively, I didn't read that as an "anti-men" movie. It, like "Dodsworth" felt like a story about a very specific (and very uncommon) situation with the woman being giving and kind and loving and the men, basically, being bastards.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 21, 2023 17:05:56 GMT
I see what you are saying, and perhaps we both have valid viewpoints. But I still feel the writing and overall presentation of the story is slanted in favor of the man, against the woman.
All of Fran's relationships in Europe are set up to fail. Just once, couldn't there have been a guy she wanted to marry, that died...or something where we were rooting for her to find happiness, but that happiness slipped through her fingers? No. Because the goal of the writing was for the audience not to sympathize with her in any way. She was constantly depicted as selfish, vain and narcissistic. The writing conveniently ignores the fact that Sam must also be narcissistic otherwise he wouldn't have named his company after himself.
Sam wants to keep beating a path back to Zenith, because he's a big fish in a small pond there. In Europe, he's a nobody while his wife is becoming a somebody. And his ego can't handle it, so he has to retreat to his provincial town and disapprove of his wife not being ready to go back there with him.
Ultimately, we are manipulated into siding with Sam, to champion his own adultery and his own decision to break away from the marriage, when we are not allowed to give the same consideration to Fran who is depicted as one-dimensional and lacking fundamental human decency. If Edith had been similar to Fran in attitude and materialism, would we have still wanted Sam to be with her? Of course not. So the writing makes all of Fran's lovers the losing variety, while it goes out of its way to make Edith a most virtuous female, so that we root for Sam's happiness and not Fran's happiness.
The story is a clever way to subvert the production code since it advocates divorce, and justifies it as something a man needs to be able to do in order to get away from an evil wife. It is really a film made by men who are trying to justify their own extra-marital affairs and what these men will likely do next...throw the self-actualizing wife aside to marry someone else who conforms with their egotistical image.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 21, 2023 18:19:01 GMT
I understand that is one interpretation of the movie, and I read and thought about your comments carefully, but I still don't see it that way. I see your detailed interpretation as put forth in the post above as one particular interpretation of the facts of their marriage and personalities, but mine is different.
I see that, yes, the man is portrayed as the good person and the woman as the bad one, but as noted, there are movies, that go the other way and I don't feel they are "anti-men" movies.
To be sure, Lewis had a divorce in his life, so this could be his roman-a-clef telling of it, but that's what authors do and it doesn't mean he's saying every man and woman are like these two.
There definitely are pictures where you feel a broad philosophy being advanced, I just don't get that here, like I didn't get it in "The Country Girl."
I don't think an author owes us that balance in every piece of his/her work, especially, as to me, this was really a dissection of one particular marriage.
That, I think, is why we see it differently.
And just to note, since you mentioned it again - and I'd have to watch the movie again to be sure - but I think Sam's "adultery" was only after Fran said she wanted a divorce and was going to marry another man, which is quite different than her serial affairs during their marriage.
I want to emphasize, I thought carefully about your comments and respect your view and, knowing you, I know how sincere and thoughtful you are about these issues, I just see it differently.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Mar 21, 2023 18:54:48 GMT
If this were not an independent Sam Goldwyn production and had been made at Warner Brothers...Fran would have been played by Bette Davis and Sam would have been played by Claude Rains. I think you're right, but it's better that a woman in her forties played Fran and Davis would have been all of 28. I really don't think WB producer Hal Wallis would have cast Bette Davis as the mother of a young woman in 1936. If Wallis was going to cast an actor that was under contract with the studio, he would have cast Kay Fransis. While Fransis was only 3 years older than Davis, she played a mother to Jane Bryan in the 1937 film Confession. I.e. Kay would have been better casting for the role Davis. (But I'm glad this is a Sam Goldwyn production since Chatterton is perfect in the role).
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Post by topbilled on Mar 21, 2023 19:15:39 GMT
I think you're right, but it's better that a woman in her forties played Fran and Davis would have been all of 28. I really don't think WB producer Hal Wallis would have cast Bette Davis as the mother of a young woman in 1936. If Wallis was going to cast an actor that was under contract with the studio, he would have cast Kay Fransis. While Fransis was only 3 years older than Davis, she played a mother to Jane Bryan in the 1937 film Confession. I.e. Kay would have been better casting for the role Davis. (But I'm glad this is a Sam Goldwyn production since Chatterton is perfect in the role). As I said in a subsequent post, my comment about how it would work with Bette Davis in the role would be in a remake made ten years after the original, not in 1936. The Bette we see in JEZEBEL and THE LETTER would have been perfect and mature enough to play Fran Dodsworth in the late 1940s.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Mar 21, 2023 19:19:05 GMT
I really don't think WB producer Hal Wallis would have cast Bette Davis as the mother of a young woman in 1936. If Wallis was going to cast an actor that was under contract with the studio, he would have cast Kay Fransis. While Fransis was only 3 years older than Davis, she played a mother to Jane Bryan in the 1937 film Confession. I.e. Kay would have been better casting for the role Davis. (But I'm glad this is a Sam Goldwyn production since Chatterton is perfect in the role). As I said in a subsequent post, my comment about how it would work with Bette Davis in the role would be in a remake made ten years after the original, not in 1936. The Bette we see in JEZEBEL and THE LETTER would have been perfect and mature enough to play Fran Dodsworth in the late 1940s.Thanks for that info. I agree 100%, that Davis would have worked well in the role in the mid-to-late 40s. Thus, I'm surprised that the film was remade by WB with a cast of Davis and Rains.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 21, 2023 19:20:34 GMT
I understand that is one interpretation of the movie, and I read and thought about your comments carefully, but I still don't see it that way. I see your detailed interpretation as put forth in the post above as one particular interpretation of the facts of their marriage and personalities, but mine is different.
I see that, yes, the man is portrayed as the good person and the woman as the bad one, but as noted, there are movies, that go the other way and I don't feel they are "anti-men" movies.
To be sure, Lewis had a divorce in his life, so this could be his roman-a-clef telling of it, but that's what authors do and it doesn't mean he's saying every man and woman are like these two.
There definitely are pictures where you feel a broad philosophy being advanced, I just don't get that here, like I didn't get it in "The Country Girl."
I don't think an author owes us that balance in every piece of his/her work, especially, as to me, this was really a dissection of one particular marriage.
That, I think, is why we see it differently.
And just to note, since you mentioned it again - and I'd have to watch the movie again to be sure - but I think Sam's "adultery" was only after Fran said she wanted a divorce and was going to marry another man, which is quite different than her serial affairs during their marriage.
I want to emphasize, I thought carefully about your comments and respect your view and, knowing you, I know how sincere and thoughtful you are about these issues, I just see it differently.
They couldn't even insert one quick scene where Fran sent a telegram to her daughter to congratulate her on the birth of the baby. They refused to show her as any sort of real human being, with any sort of likable character traits. She was a cardboard witch and they used Madame Ouspenskaya's character to give her a comeuppance.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Mar 21, 2023 23:28:22 GMT
Well the screenwriter\director wanted to oversell the point that Fran didn't wish to admit she was a grandmother, which would hinder her pursuit of a lover, especially a younger one. But this was not the Facebook era, where any exchange between mother and daughter would be known by others (e.g. Fran's potential suiters). By doing so the screenwriter\director provides a great set-up for the comeuppance adding to the drama of that scene.
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