User reviews

Wrongheaded critics: There are more than one user reviews posted here including one that says the film should get zero stars because it deals with slavery. I think such an attitude about a movie that was made at any time let alone the 1930s is absurd. Are they supposed to pretend that slavery in the 1700s somehow did not exist and that many many people were involved in this trade? It's idiotic. The film clearly shows that there were those risking their lives in opposition to the slave trade and that there were others who were corrupted by the wealth and power that they gained from it. So to those pretentious and moralistic critics, I say get off your self righteous high horse and look at this film and all others in its proper historical context.

Frederic March is "Anthony Adverse" in this 1936 film that also stars Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, Anita Louise Gail Sondergaard, Donald Woods, Edmund Gwenn and Louis Hayward.

Anita Louise and Hayward both have small roles as illicit lovers in the beginning of the film - she's married to Marquis de Luis (Claude Rains) and dies giving birth to a son by Denis (Hayward). The evil marquis drops the baby off at a convent, where he lives until he is 10 years old. Then he is adopted by a merchant, Mr. Bonnyfeather (Gwenn), who happens to be his grandfather.

Bonnyfeather sees his daughter in the boy's (Billy Mauch) angelic face. This beautiful little boy grows up to be a blond Frederic March, who has been given the name Anthony Adverse. He's in love with Angela (de Havilland), an aspiring opera singer, but goes to Africa to recover his grandfather's fortune rather than stay with her. There he becomes involved in slave trading. When he returns, things have changed for Angela - and for him.

The film is based on a best-selling book, and I have to agree that both the film and the book seem forgotten today, as is the director, Mervyn Leroy. March is wrong for the role - he doesn't convey enough charisma, for one thing - certainly Brian Aherne or Errol Flynn would have been much more compelling. March was a wonderful actor but he needed a strong director to get him away from being "stagy," and this type of role was never his métier anyway.

The gorgeous ingénue de Havilland gives a lovely performance, but the standouts are the villains - Sondergaard, as Bonnyfeather's housekeeper and Claude Rains as the marquis.

TCM gives this movie very high stars, probably based on the fact that it won four Oscars (one for Sondergaard who doesn't do much but look snide) and that it was nominated for Best Picture in 1936. The pickings must have been slim.

This is a good film, with an exciting carriage chase in the mountains and some brutal scenes of slave trading, but it's hard to keep interested in it. Adverse isn't terribly likable, for one thing. It's the story of a man and how he is molded into a human being by two priests and a woman. It's a lofty idea that doesn't quite make it onto the screen.

Fredric March, usually such a fine actor, was unable to give more than a wooden performance in the title role of 'Anthony Adverse'. Warner Bros. would have been better off using their up-and-coming new star, Errol Flynn, for this one--giving us the chance to see him paired once again with Olivia de Havilland. There are no sparks between March and de Havilland--he seems too old for the role despite clever make-up attempts to make him look suitable. But aside from the fact that he is miscast, there is a lot to admire about the film itself. For one thing, Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard make the most memorable pair of villains ever seen in a 1930s movie. The sequence where they cause a coach and driver to go off a cliff is given an extra punch by their dialog. "He was my favorite coachman," says Rains dryly. "The coach was rather handy too," quips Sondergaard. Giving other outstanding performances are Edmund Gwenn, Louis Hayward, Anita Louise, Donald Woods and Akim Tamiroff. Some of the acting styles seem dated, as are the titles that connect the time span. The best-seller was a bulky 1,200 pages from which the scriptwriter trimmed the story down considerably, excluding whole segments of the book and still ending up with a film well over two hours. Strange how the celebrated novel is barely remembered today. The opera scenes with Olivia de Havilland are interesting. She was a radiant young beauty at the time but could have used a better technique in her lip sync to the lyrics. Interesting historical drama of the Napoleonic era with Rains and Sondergaard giving the best performances. I've written articles on both of them for CLASSIC IMAGES, inspired by their performances in this film.

Fredric March stars as the title character, an orphan boy discarded due to his illegitimacy, who overcomes much adversity throughout his life. He is raised in a convent and adopted by a wealthy merchant, Edmund Gwenn, at the age of ten. He learns the business, but is shipped to Havana around the time of the French Revolution. Before he departs, it is learned that he has married the daughter of a servant, Olivia DeHavilland. He is thought lost at sea by all, but is actually in Africa running a slave trade, with his heart blackening the whole time. From there, the tale takes many twists as Anthony must find goodness in his heart again, and DeHavilland may be the key. The drama is a bit heavy-handed and some overacting is present. Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard make great antagonists, and Sondergaard won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.

I have not read the largely forgotten book on which this movie is based.

My favorite films are from the early 30's to the mid 40's. The cast in this film is stellar, including some of my favorite leads and supporting actors. I love costume dramas and adventures set in exotic places. However, with all of those factors to prejudice me in favor of Anthony Adverse, I was hugely disappointed.

The plot seems okay. The sets and costumes are excellent. The cast, as I already mentioned, is stellar (in the credits!). The score seems appropriate. The expensive production shows throughout. The reason this film is so unsatisfying is rather puzzling. I think it may be one of those times everybody from the director on down was simply going through the motions. Hard to believe, given the cast. But they all seem so - not just two-dimensional, but - lifeless. Perhaps, as one other reviewer suggests, this film would have been better if de Havilland had been teamed with Errol Flynn instead of Frederic March. I don't remember seeing Flynn ever give a less than energetic performance.

Frederic March, one of America's greats, fails to create a character that I could like, sympathize with or root for with any enthusiasm. In fact enthusiasm is what he seems to lack in this role. Olivia de Havilland is somewhat better, but this is one of her least impressive performances. Gale Sondergaard did very little to receive an academy award. The appearances of Louis Heyward and Anita Louise are entirely too short. I like both, and I would have liked more of them and less of March and de Havilland. Perhaps they should have reversed roles...

Edmund Gwenn delivers a typically endearing performance in a typical Edmund Gwenn role. Henry O'Neill is usually very interesting, because he plays both sides of the fence - both good and bad guys. Here, his father Xavier is far more enjoyable than Pedro De Cordoba's Father Francoise.

The only bright spot in this under-achieving ensemble is Claude Rains. He, too, plays both good and bad guys. Here he is an aristocratic charmer and schemer - despicable and deceitful. He is great! In the scene where he laughs demonically, he sends a chill up my spine. Thank you, Mr. Rains, for delivering a great, under-appreciated performance, in an otherwise deservedly forgotten film.

At film's end, I felt like I had read a 1200 page novel - and simultaneously like I had no interest in reading THIS one.

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.

The movie is 2 and a half hours long and it went by pretty quick. I was surprised at all the negative reviews because i thought it was pretty good. The only part that is pretty bad was the first scene with the two lovers, because they were pretty bad actors and it was pretty funny to see Claude Rains saying he's one of the world's greatest swords man and then watch him actually in a sword fight. In the first scene Rains kills his wife's lover and takes his baby and drops it off at an convent. It shows him growing up and falling in love with Olivia De Havilland. The was one part that didn't quite make sense, in which March goes to Africa to become a slave trader and i couldn't understand the reasoning behind the character.

... is what I ask myself when I watch this. You can tell by the trailers Warner Brothers was shooting for epic. Instead they end up with a seemingly endless annoying historical potboiler. But WB was growing up, just a poverty row studio less than ten years before. They didn't really get "epic" right the first time until The Adventures of Robin Hood two years later.

Not that it is overly long but it tries to do too much in too many settings, yet has little to say at the same time. The end product is disjoint and more than a little silly. But it is the goofy dialogue and unbelievable plotline that truly dooms it.

For instance, there is no way that nice guy Anthony would suddenly take up slave trading just because he was wheedled by his "loving" boss into becoming a collection agent! To make matters even worse, the production team must have stressed "Hey, this is an epic! Everyone act epic!!" because every performer in the movie--from the stars to the extras --overacts immensely, making for a number of stupid and laughable scenes. There is a scene where Don Luis (Claude Raines) and Denis (Louis Hayward) are dueling and Maria (Anita Louise) shouts out "Look out, Denis!", idiotically distracting her lover just long enough for him to get wrung through by her evil hubby. In another "action" scene, the bad guys try to run Anthony off a mountainside but end up coming across like Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle Show. So instead of epic you get corny and completely artificial.

I'm a big fan of Fredric March, and it is only this man's talent that grounds this story in even a sliver's worth of reality, but even his skills are put to the test in this, surely his worst film. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, today it is Exhibit A in just how bad films could be after the production code was first adopted.

Today both Hervey Allen and his novel, Anthony Adverse, are all but forgotten, as is the 1936 Mervyn Leroy adaptation. Allen has never been granted a biography or a critical study( one could also say the same thing about Mervyn Leroy) while both the novel and the film are dismissed as over blown, prolix "white elephants". This is not entirely fair. Allens 1200 page colossus was the greatest best seller of its day, and was only surpassed when Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With The Wind, while Leroys film isn't bad. In fact it is pretty good, in its own way. First of all, Leroy managed to condense Allens erudite, baroque epic into the space of a two -hour, black and white film. In doing so, he managed to retain most of the novels elaborate religious symbolism( Allen seems to have been either a Lapsed, but still affectionate Catholic or an Episcopalian of the "high church " variety with a fascination with Priests, The Virgin Mary, and Crucifixion symbols), all of the colorful characters( Allen seems to have ransacked Tolstoy, Dickens, Dumas, and Balzac for ideas.), and most of the action.( the carriage chase in the Alps is one of the great "scenes" of thirties cinema). The film has also retained the novels plot, or most of it. One would not know, for example, that the hero ends up dying rather UNheroically in Texas sometime in the early eighteen twenties, or that the book has a truly bizarre, ambiguous epilogue in which "white trash" settlers of Texas from Missouri stumble across the statuette of the virgin and the ruins of Adverses estate.The great problem with the book -and with the film- is that Anthony Adverse is NOT a heroic figure. He is played upon, not player, a passive, frequently humiliated victim of adversity. Clearly, Allen wanted to make him a philosophical hero, not a swashbuckler. He is a clerk, for heavens sake. Most of the time, he is engaged in capitalist transactions of some sort, instead of sword-play. ( indeed, the only sword- play in the movie is between the villainous Don Luis and Anthony's father.)The basic action is simple. One Priest gives Anthony a mind,by teaching him. Another gives him a soul, by reminding him that slavery is a sin( Incidentally, the film is a powerful indictment of slavery and racism). Finally, Olivia De Havillands character gives him a heart, by introducing him to the son he never knew he had. March-a very fine actor at his best- seems curiously flat and passive in the role of Adverse. The truly great performances are by Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard as the over the top super-villains. Rains exhudes decadence, arrogance and sadism, while Sondergaard won the first best supporting actress Oscar, simply by grinning satanically for two hours.

It is hard to not expect much from 'Anthony Adverse'. Starting with that it is adapted from great and sadly now neglected source material, a big work but a riveting one. And then we have a cast full of immense talent, anything that has Olivia De Havilland and Claude Rains in particular has me sold and like a lot of what Fredric March has done. Mervyn LeRoy did do some fine films, especially 'Gold Diggers of 1933', 'Random Harvest' and 'Waterloo Bridge'.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a great composer for film, one of my favourite film scores being that for 'The Adventures of Robin Hood'. Also wanted to see how Gale Sondergaard fared in her debut and her ground-breaking (in film history) Oscar win, being the first to win for the Best Supporting Actress category. And whether it was as good as its four Oscar wins suggested. So 'Anthony Adverse' had so much to live up to and generally doesn't do too badly in doing so, it doesn't deserve its near-forgotten status. It sadly isn't completely successful though and there was a better film in there somewhere that doesn't fully materialise.

Although the acting is mostly fine, March for me disappointed. He gave far more natural and more emotionally involved and charismatic performances before and since, here he comes over as stiff and going through the motions. He seemed an interesting choice on paper but comes over as taxed on screen. His chemistry with De Havilland, who fares far better, doesn't have much to it and his character just isn't that investable.

The film takes far too long to get going, the first portion is too slight narratively and like sluggish set-up that is a slog to get through. It can get heavy handed and over-complicated in places, it translates fairly faithfully (despite not having the full story) but there are understandable condensations which gives a sprawling feel at times.

On the most part though, 'Anthony Adverse' does well with adapting its large scale source material (not an easy under-taking) and the scale of the film itself is just as mammoth. For all its flaws, the massive effort that went into the film is obvious in pretty much every aspect. It is hugely rewarding visually, certainly looking expensive and showing the studio in its prime using their resources to the absolute utmost. Especially good is the photography, which is quite jaw-dropping in its spectacle. The editing has occasional rough edges but a vast majority of it is crisp, tight and fluid. To me, Korngold's score was the most deserving of the assets that won Oscars, showing to the fullest what made Korngold such a great film composer. It is lushly orchestrated and also rousing, in distinctive Korngold style.

LeRoy's direction is a touch sluggish at first at times, but when the film's action gets into gear and quite rousingly so it is more at ease with the material and very skillful. The story has some bumps, but at its best it excites and charms without being overwrought, the conflict also having suspense. The script is intelligently adapted without being too over-literate. March aside, the performances are of high quality. DeHavilland is radiant and one can see why Adverse would be in love with her.

Edmund Gwenn is typically endearing and Sondergaard does give the creeps memorably, with her and Claude Rains having some of the best line and an almost eerie chemistry. Their coach scene is a scene that is likely to be etched in my mind for a long time. My favourite performance though was from Rains, that he was not even nominated was an oversight in my view, who is gleefully menacing while playing Don Luis to the hilt.

Summarising, uneven but pretty impressive. If the book gets another adaptation, it would be better to make it a mini-series. 7/10

"Anthony Adverse" is the kind of long costume drama and epic romance that Academy voters love (with four, it won the most awards for films of 1936, and tied for the most nominations with seven) and studios seem to believe (or rationalize) lend them prestige, especially when their box office doesn't otherwise justify their costs. Technically--classical continuity editing, glossy cinematography with a deep depth of field, large sets, a dramatic score and glamorous costumes--it's the crème de la crème of Hollywood filmmaking at the time. While there's plenty to like about that, the style is so mercantile but lacking the adventurousness suitable to a narrative spanning half a lifetime and three continents, preceding the Declaration of Independence and ending during the Napoleonic Wars. It tends to be prosaic, as is the story adapted from prose--swollen with episodic diversions, contrivances and lurid melodrama, which is ultimately over-long and trite--a spiritless adaptation of a novel, reportedly, concerning a spiritual journey.

Besides some bad rear-projection and the obviousness of some other special effects, this is a pretty picture. I love the "Goodbye, Anthony" shots of Angela (Olivia de Havilland) turning away teary eyed and Anthony (Fredric March) walking down the corridor at the opera. Throughout, camera movement is limited mostly to brief tracking shots, but they flow well. Some shots exploit depth of field well by being framed through windows--look at all those shots where characters stand by such frames--and by focusing on the background but partially blocking it with foreground characters or objects. Although burdened by its convoluted plot and story, the pacing is an adequate average shot length of about 8.7 seconds according to my count. Classical continuity editing is adhered to with plentiful crosscutting, eyeline matches and shot/reverse shots, and the musical score helps, including leitmotifs, which I especially enjoyed for Don Luis (Claude Rains) sword fighting in the film's first love-triangle episode. Music is essentially constant, operatic and even a dominant force in this one, with the film's climax appropriately occurring at the theatre--opera within opera.

Then, there's the episodic, crisscrossing-continents plot that spends nearly two-and-a-half hours following a protagonist from his conception to his being en route to America with his own son and still doesn't resolve everything, including his spiritual restoration. Anthony, indeed, faces much adversity--born of adultery, committing it himself, orphaned, traded from merchant to church to merchant, Cuban outlaw, African slave trader, lost wife, unknown relatives, conniving cartoony enemies trying to thwart him at every turn--but he's still a greedy colonialist in the end, not a man of God like the Catholic priests he befriends. He's an unlikable hero. The reliance on title cards for the passage of time, although they nicely overlay imagery, also contribute to the plodding plot, and there are far too many contrivances where Anthony repeatedly comes in contact conveniently with the right person needed to advance the narrative. Although Rains, cackling and chewing scenery, and Oscar-winner Gale Sondergaard, intermittently seething and grimacing as though preparing to hiss, are somewhat more entertaining than the leads and supposedly-good characters, as they revel in their misdeeds, but they're over-the-top, one-dimensional characterizations. Ultimately, this is also just another hackneyed, morally hypocritical melodrama, marginalizing its servants and slaves, concerning itself with the problems of wealthy people, self-serving in its glamorization of a businessman who, like many of the studio heads of Hollywood, left Europe for America in the pursuit of fortune.

(Note: Among the film's mirror shots, one of the title cards overlays young Anthony's reflection in water, and a pivotal scene turns on slave-trader Anthony being disgusted seeing himself in a mirror. By contrast, an earlier composite shot where Denis sees Don Luis reflected in his wine glass is rather poorly done.)

Hervey Allen (1889-1949) spun quite an elaborate, sweeping 18th-19th century yarn in the form of a gigantic novel, published in 1933, called "Anthony Adverse." It became a best-seller, and three years later Warner Bros. brought it to the screen, directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

The film was very long, comprehensive, and romanitc, in Allen's quasi-Dumas-Dickens-Tolstoy style.

Heading the cast were four of the screen's finest actors, leading players Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland; and supporting character players Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard.

Providing the musical score was the legendary Eric Wolfgang Korngold (with orchestrations by Hugo Friedhofer) and classic masque and operatic excerpts by Monteverdi and Francetti.

The 141-minute film today seems much longer than it is, as we follow Anthony's detailed "adventures" in Europe, Cuba, and Africa, with America targeted as a final future destination. The whole production, which was considered of blockbuster size in 1933 (and still looks impressive), emerges more like a historic relic that is occasionally pulled from a treasure cabinet, to observe and ponder.

The whole feel of the film now seems dated and out-of-fashion, but then that's what most memorabilia is. It's merely dusted it off, polished, felt for the moment, then replaced along side other treasured pieces from the past.

"Epic" story of an orphan named Anthony Adverse who grows up and makes a series of bad choices that ultimately may cost him the woman he loves. Admittedly, that's an oversimplified summary. I haven't read the novel on which this movie is based. It was a huge best-seller during the Great Depression but has since been largely forgotten. If anyone ever needs proof that just because something is popular today doesn't mean it will stand the test of time, point to Anthony Adverse.

On its technical merits, it's a well-made film of its type and era. The score is excellent. The film's strongest asset is a truly exceptional cast. Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland are fine leads with wonderful support from the likes of Edmund Gwenn, Claude Rains, Gale Sondergaard, and many more. This was Sondergaard's film debut and she won the very first Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it. Some of the cast plays to the rafters but if you're a fan of '30s melodramas this probably won't bother you. Others beware. It's an overlong film but I can't say I ever lost interest in it. I do think they could have shortened the first twenty minutes that dealt with Anthony's parents and it wouldn't have hurt the movie any.

It's not a masterpiece, but it's not bad either. It has its charm and more if you take it to the plane of those years. It made me capable for a long time but for a personal and contemporaneity issue, it is not the best that has been preserved over the years but Mervyn LeRoy manages to direct this adventurous drama with romantic flashes neatly intertwining these genres.

The symbology with the word adversity is clear, and in each problem it is further enhanced in the character arc of Anthony.

The performances are good, on the one hand Fredric March is one of the best actors of the 30s for me and every time I have seen his work, he does not disappoint me and this is no exception. Project in that man the child that we had been seeing in the course of which he showed the desire to grow but at the same time afraid of doing it, with great courage and class at the same time. On the other hand, a young Olivia de Havilland who offers a fresh performance that denotes the great promise she fulfilled as an actress, a beautiful romance with March.

This film was nominated for 7 Oscars in 1937, where it won 4 statuettes: -Best Cinematography, which is beautiful and its ending proves it.

-Best Supporting Actress to Gale Sondergaard who plays a greedy, manipulative and humorous woman, she is not my favorite of the year but I understand and share her victory.

• Best Film Editing.

• Best Music, Score.

For several reasons, I had always wanted to check this one out but it took me this long (specifically, the current Oscar season) to get to it: for being an epic from Hollywood's golden age, its winning four Academy Awards (including the first given for Best Supporting Actress), but also for its baffling neglect over the years (it has not even been accorded a "Warner Archives Collection" MOD release, so that I have had to make do with an old VHS-to-DVD-to-DivX transfer!); besides, while Leslie Halliwell rated it just *, Leonard Maltin was far more generous with ***1/2…

Anyway, the plot-heavy film (adapted from the 1,200-page Hervey Allen bestseller) is encased in a beautiful production which, at the time, was the studio's longest and most expensive undertaking; it was even deemed important enough to have a behind-the-scenes documentary (certainly among the very first of its kind), ostentatiously called "The Making Of A Great Motion Picture", attached to it but which, sadly, is not available at this juncture! The cast list reads like a "Who's Who" of international talent, both in star roles and character parts: Fredric March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, Gale Sondergaard (winning an Oscar in her debut performance!), Edmund Gwenn, Anita Louise, Louis Hayward, Henry O'Neill, Donald Woods, Luis Alberni, Akim Tamiroff, J. Carroll Naish, etc.

While I admit that the narrative is not the most exciting ever conceived and is, unsurprisingly, quite contrived (not least washer-woman De Havilland's – bearing the hilarious surname of Guisseppi {sic} – outrageous fortune in becoming an operatic prima donna and Napoleon's current fling, renamed "Mademoiselle Georges"!), there is no doubt that everyone approaches it with the utmost commitment. The result is thus rendered a good-looking and superbly underscored ride which manages not to slip into tedium throughout; no wonder that all these virtues (courtesy of cinematographer Tony Gaudio, composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and editor Ralph Dawson) were recognized by the Academy…though the music nod was actually given in Leo F. Forbstein's name, then Warners' Head Of (this) Department! For the record, it was also nominated for Best Picture (losing out to the even more inflated THE GREAT ZIEGFELD), Art Direction (the work of the renowned Anton Grot) and Assistant Direction (in one of only five years where this honour was bestowed).

Incidentally, even if this has the look of a typical Warners epic – especially those directed by Michael Curtiz (who, reportedly, lent a hand at some point during shooting) and starring Errol Flynn – the feel is very different, because it stresses characterization over action: nevertheless, we get a swordfight early on and slave-trading occupies a good part of its middle section! As for the curious presence of General Bonaparte (among those who tested for the part was Humphrey Bogart!), it is worth remembering that he also put in a similarly unlikely 'cameo' in Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche" (splendidly filmed twice, in 1923 and 1952)!

There is no point in going through its episodic structure, since it is so vast, or even its flaws: with respect to the latter, suffice to say that, while March (it takes him some time to find his feet here, but eventually settles down and rises to the occasion when required) and De Havilland's characters are supposed to be of comparable age, the stars' 19-year discrepancy does not come in the way of their on screen relationship (still, it does not lead to a happy ending!). Even better suited, however, are the two delightful villains of the piece i.e. Rains (who, upon learning that he has been left in charge of the illegitimate child of his deceased wife, gives the distinctive laugh that had stood him in good stead under the bandages of THE INVISIBLE MAN {1933} a thorough workout!) and Sondergaard; interestingly, too, neither gets a comeuppance here!

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.

A big heaping dose of melodramatic nonsense starring Fredric March as an orphaned child who grows up to find himself at the center of a devious plot to steal his family's fortune.

The film was based on a wildly popular book and I think the movie itself was also a big hit with audiences at the time, but it makes for a rather plodding and dull watch now. Its best asset is Claude Rains as the chief villain, who made any movie more watchable just by virtue of being in it.

"Anthony Adverse" emerged as the most awarded film at the 1936 Oscars, winning four at a time in Oscar's history when it was rare for any one movie to dominate the awards. Gale Sondergaard collected the very first Best Supporting Actress Oscar ever awarded, playing Anthony's evil stepmother who joins Rains in the scheme to get their hands on his money. She mostly stands behind Fredric March looking devious -- not sure her performance is really award worthy, but all manner of strange choices were made back then. The film also won Oscars for its cinematography, film editing, and score, an award that went not to the film's composer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but rather to the Warner Bros. music department chief Leo Forbstein. In addition, the film received nominations for Best Picture, Best Assistant Director (William Cannon), and Best Art Direction, which is probably the film's most impressive feature, spanning a variety of locations from aristocratic drawing rooms to opera houses to snowy mountaintops.

Grade: B-

There was no ending to this film. Everything in the film was unresolved. It had the feel of a project that was scrapped and cobbled together from existing scenes. When the film was over, all I could do was say "You've got to be kidding", over and over again. I love Olivia De Havilland, and the story had promise. Sadly, it did not deliver.

The main pleasure this film gives me is the music in it by Erich Korngold, and especially the African scene around the dying of the Priest. He used the same theme in his only Symphony and in other works to. The film's main story was a wonderful vehicle for Korngold's creating genius to have full reign in the emotion department. Long may romantic music be heard if the nasty music critics will allow it. They are very guilty of suppressing some of the most beautiful music to be written or heard in this life. Example, Eugene D'Albert's magnificent Opera "Tiefland" do we ever hear it on any classical music programme? No ! I rest my case. The film is very enjoyable and all the cast were superb, but Oh how they compressed the story, the book I believe is very long and attempting to Hollywood it didn't really do the book justice. However it remains one of my favourites. Is there anyone else out there who loves Korngold's music, if so, please get in touch with me. here is my E mail address rupertloach@aol.com Thank you. R. Loach

Ok this has always been one of my favorite classic movies . As a biography it is very interesting. There is room for lots of jokes too. I think it's hilarious the way the priest shows up at bonnyfeathers with a naked boy 🤣

The novel of Anthony Adverse is 1200 pages; the mere fact that Sheridan Gibney was able to condense it into a screenplay at all is a miracle. Since there's much in the story, I cut the movie slack that it's a little uneven and abrupt at times. It's a pretty famous classic from the 1930s and marked a milestone in the Academy Awards ballots forever after: Gale Sondergaard won the very first Best Supporting Actress Oscar; before 1936, the supporting awards didn't exist!

That being said, Gale's performance is a little one-dimensional. She plays a conniving villainess who plots against the hero since before he's born. Fredric March plays the hero, the title character, but a good chunk of the movie is before he's grown up. Billy Mauch plays the adorable hero as a child. Freddie's love interest is Olivia de Havilland, and the huge supporting cast includes Claude Rains, Edmund Gwenn, Anita Louise, Donald Woods, Louis Hayward, and J. Carrol Naish.

The story is a vast epic, starting from before Fredric March's birth. His mother has an affair, and when she dies giving him life, her cuckolded husband drops the baby at a convent, hoping to never see or hear from him again. Obviously, since Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard are still prominently featured in the movie, a reunion is anticipated. . .

Anthony Adverse is two and a half hours, but it easily could be remade into a ten-hour miniseries. Anthony's character travels around the world, and years of his life pass in between scenes sometimes. If you like grand epics, like Les Misérables or Lord Jim, you'll want to check this movie out.