Anthony Adverse: A Review

ANTHONY ADVERSE

I do not think that Warner Brothers were known for making epic, prestigious movies. Anthony Adverse, the adaptation of Hervey Allen's massive historical novel, was their stab at grand cinema. It did get them seven Oscar nominations and four wins, including the inaugural Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Sadly, Anthony Adverse has not stood the test of time. Very long, surprisingly dull, Anthony Adverse is an adversity to sit through.

The marriage between young Maria Bonnyfeather (Anita Louise) and the Spanish Marquis Don Luis (Claude Rains) has yet to be consummated. Maria, a Scottish merchant's daughter, is not in love with the Marquis. Her heart belongs to Denis Moore (Louis Hayward), who is younger and handsomer. She certainly consummates her relationship with Denis. Unfortunately for her, Don Luis has recovered enough from his gout to feel frisky. Unfortunately for Don Luis, Maria is knocked up. Maria and Denis attempt to escape, but Don Luis manages to catch up with them and kills Maria's lover.

Maria, despondent, dies in childbirth. Conspiring with Maria's wicked housekeeper Faith Paleologus (Gale Sondergaard), they take the newborn boy to a nunnery. Here, the sisters raise the child they call Anthony (as he was found on Saint Anthony's Day). By a strange twist of fate, young Anthony is taken to John Bonnyfeather (Edmund Gwenn) to be his apprentice. John deduces that Anthony is his grandson based on his resemblance to Maria and how one of Anthony's few possessions is a Catholic figure that he identifies as Maria's. He cannot claim Anthony as his blood owing to potential postmortem scandal. As such, he gives the child what he considers an appropriate surname: Anthony Adverse.

Anthony (Fredric March) grows strong and handsome and kind. He also grows to continue his love for the Italian cook's daughter Angela Guisseppi (Olivia de Havilland). Angela yearns to be an opera singer, an aspiration that succeeds due to her father winning the lottery and able to now take his family up socially. Everyone in their village of Leghorn (pronounced Legohn) now faces a new challenge: the rise of Napolean Bonaparte (Rollo Llyod). Fortunes financial and romantic rise and fall under the Napoleonic Age. Anthony and Angela marry. So do Faith and Don Luis. Bonnyfeather struggles to keep his fortune. Circumstances and misunderstandings separate Anthony and Angela.

Anthony ends up first in Cuba and then in darkest Africa, where he becomes a bitter slave trader. Will the morality of abolitionist Father Francois (Pedro de Cordova) reform Anthony? Will Anthony wrestle the late John Bonnyfeather's fortune away from Faith, now the Marquise Don Luis? Will Anthony and Angela reunite, or will he find that the Emperor's newest mistress is something that they share in common?  

Anthony Adverse is close to two and a half hours. I figure the reason for it being so long is because the filmmakers wanted to showcase the breath and scope of the film. It is also true that the Hervey Allen novel is exceptionally long. It was, per my understanding, published in three volumes, with each volume containing three separate sections. Had it been made now, I imagine that Anthony Adverse would have been a miniseries or even a whole television series. Unfortunately, it became a film that is far too long for its own good.

It takes close to half an hour (twenty-two minutes by my count) to get to Anthony. That whole time is spent on a very overwrought romance between Maria and Denis. That includes the unconsummated honeymoon between Don Luis and Maria, Maria and Denis endlessly declaring their love for and to each other, Don Luis' recovery, the discovery of the liaison, the flight to the Alps, the killing of Denis (owing in no small part due to Maria's idiocy), the birth of the literal bastard, and the abandonment of said bastard.

All that, I imagine, could have been covered in less than ten minutes. We did not have to have at least two scenes of Maria and Denis making googly-eyes at each other. We did not have to have a scene where Don Luis is taking the cure. We did not have to have a scene where Don Luis and Faith literally laugh maniacally. 

Even worse, it takes forty-two minutes for the adult Anthony to appear. That means another twenty minutes is spent on Anthony's childhood. He is highly sheltered within the convent's walls. He is tutored by the local priest. He spies the young Angela. He is taken to Bonnyfeather where local children taunt him. They do more than that to Anthony, who has never interacted with children and does not know how to behave around them. Bizarrely dressed as a little priest, Anthony is soon literally stripped of his cloak, revealing him to be stark naked underneath.

That is well close to almost an hour on things that could have been wrapped up in half the time. Add to that how, once Anthony and Angela are reunited, we have twenty minutes to go. Anthony meets his son (at least I presume it is his son). In many films, this might have been the end. However, we needed to have a big opera scene where Anthony discovers that Angela is not just a diva, but Napoleon's newest mistress.  

I suspect that Anthony Adverse was Warner Brothers' big step towards prestige production. In a certain sense, they did show that they could. The sets are opulent. The costumes are rich and elegant. Of particular note is when Angela unexpectedly sees Anthony at a ball in Napoleon's honor. On the production side, no expense was spared. While I doubt that Anthony Adverse actually went to Africa to film the slave trading scenes, it looked convincing enough. 

However, where Anthony Adverse fails and fails big time is in its structure. So much of Anthony Adverse could have been shortened. I suspect that in hands other than those of screenwriter Sheridan Gibney, we could have seen a shorter film. The sprawling nature of Anthony Adverse ends up making it feel unimportant. Still, he cannot be blamed for everything.

Some of that blame lands on director Mervyn LeRoy. There is a lot of embarrassing acting going on in Anthony Adverse. Anita Louise and Louis Hayward start things out badly. Their love scenes are almost cartoonish in their manner. They are so overwrought attempting to show how passionate they are towards each other that it goes into almost crazed theatrics. Claude Rains is my favorite actor of all time. Here though, I winced a bit in his early scenes. There is a scene where he and Gale Sondergaard were literally cackling to where I think both of them were so over-the-top and knew it. I almost thought that it was a hammy outtake that had been left in accidentally. 

Fredric March too could also be overdoing things. While Rains eventually settled down, March went the opposite route. He started out fine. Once he got to Africa and attempted to show how bitter and disillusioned Anthony had grown, he started looking laughable. I do not think that he ever fully recovered.

Olivia de Havilland was the standout in Anthony Adverse. Yes, she could be a bit overly dramatic too. However, she was also able to make some of her scenes moving. When she sees her husband has returned, the shock that de Havilland shows looks genuine rather than silly. I will say that the idea of Olivia de Havilland convincing anyone that she was this Italian peasant girl is a bit of a stretch. It is a bit more unbelievable to see her as some kind of opera diva. Still, in her defense de Havilland did not embarrass herself in the film.

If Anthony Adverse is remembered at all today it is due to Gale Sondergaard and her Best Supporting Actress Oscar win. This was the first year that the Academy presented Oscars to actors for both supporting and lead performances. Did Sondergaard deserve the win for her turn as the villainous and unfaithful Faith? That conversation is for another time. I will say that Gale Sondergaard did seem to delight in making Faith this wicked woman. In her face, her manner, the contempt that she shows, Sondergaard did go all-out. It kind of kept to the spirit of much of Anthony Adverse's acting; it was either big or going for big. 

Sondergaard was one of four Oscar wins that Anthony Adverse received out of seven nominations including Best Picture. I will not argue against Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score (awarded to the Warner Brothers' Studio Music Department). I also will not argue against its Cinematography win. It is a nice-looking film if that. I would take up some issue with the Film Editing win. 

Anthony Adverse is pretty much forgotten now. Even Gale Sondergaard's Best Supporting Actress Oscar win is more a historical footnote than something people still talk about. She is more remembered for two things outside Anthony Adverse. It is for either being blacklisted during the McCarthy Era or for turning down the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Anthony Adverse is far too long and overly acted to enjoy. It is more for Best Supporting Actress winner completists than for anything else. It is ultimately a true adversity to sit through. 

DECISION: D+