Cineanalyst "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.)

HotToastyRag 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 gibing 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 Sodergaard 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.

joseph23006 The book by Herve Allen, a Pittsburgher like myself, is an excellent read, and the movie sticks to the narrative closer than most films of the time did to their source material. However (there is always the 'however'), Warner Brothers only filmed 3/4 of the story, maybe 800 pages. Anthony goes to America and eventually dies by his own hand chopping down a tree. Had the whole story been filmed, it would have rivaled GWTW in length and in Academy Awards. The imagery of a tree is the important element: subtle in the film, more defined in the book. The seed (under the code) is planted, it sprouts, it grows, it blossoms, it matures, then it dies. The constant is the Madonna in the cathedral shaped box.The Korngold score is one of the greatest ever, operatic, underpinning each important word that is spoken, i.e. 'No father, no mother, no name!', but also communicates what the code at the time did not want movies to show.

utgard14 "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.