Anthony Adverse (1936)

Calificación de los usuarios:

6.7/10   

Director:

Mervyn LeRoy

Escritores:

Hervey Allen (novel)
Sheridan Gibney (screenplay)

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

29 agosto 1936 (USA)

Género:

Aventura | Drama | Romance

Plot:

In 18th-century Italy, an orphan's debt to the man who raised him threatens to separate him forever from the woman he loves.

Plot Keywords:

Italy | Love | Orphan | Debt | Paris

Premios:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 3 nominations

Comentarios de los usuarios:

Child of Adversity

Reparto

Fredric March	...	Anthony Adverse
Olivia de Havilland	...	Angela Guiseppe
Donald Woods	...	Vincent Nolte
Anita Louise	...	Maria
Edmund Gwenn	...	John Bonnyfeather
Claude Rains	...	Marquis Don Luis
Louis Hayward	...	Denis Moore
Gale Sondergaard	...	Faith Paleologus
Steffi Duna	...	Neleta
Akim Tamiroff	...	Carlo Cibo
Ralph Morgan	...	Signore De Bruille
Fritz Leiber	...	Ouvrard
Luis Alberni	...	Tony Guiseppe
Billy Mauch	...	Anthony Adverse, at 10
Henry O'Neill	...	Father Xavier

También conocida como:

El caballero Adverse (Spain) [es]

Duración:

141 min

País:

USA

Idioma:

Inglés | Italiano

Color:

Negro y Blanco

Relación de Aspecto:

1.37 : 1

Sonido:

Mono

Clasificación:

Argentina:Atp | USA:TV-G | Australia:G | USA:Approved (PCA #1784)

Locaciones de Filmación:

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Compañía:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivialidades:

Warner Bros. paid $40,000 for the screen rights to the 1200-page novel.

Citas:

[first lines]
Marquis Don Luis: I dare say you wish you'd never left Versailles. You had a very pleasant time at court with those gallant young officers. With one in particular, I recall.

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: 50 Years of Magic (1990) (TV)

Banda de Sonido:

I'll Wait For You My Love (Angela's Song)

Child of Adversity

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.