calvinnme ...when movies were not that realistic - 1936. Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) for the sake of his wife's happiness, has sold the car company that he created and built up with his own two hands and made plans for an extended trip to Europe. You can see the sadness on his face as he leaves his old world behind. On the steamship to Europe the trouble begins. Dodworth's wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), begins a flirtation. Dodworth begins a friendship with a divorcée, Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), a divorcée living in Italy, on her way back home. Sam tries to make the best of this upending of his world and sees this as an opportunity to learn new things. However, Fran's vanity, and the flirtations of the European men she meets, begin to have her pulling away from her husband. She eventually dumps Sam so she can pursue her life and a new love - a much younger one - in Europe. I love the irony with Fran and her attitude towards Europe. She tells Sam that "they're my people, they understand me, or something to that effect.Later she finds out different in the form of the redoubtable Maria Ouspenskaya, who asks her all sorts of nagging questions, for instance, how old are you? It is made clear to her that she is unacceptable as the old wife to a young husband who is expected to produce heirs. There is a difference between spending a summer at an Italian villa and trying to marry the son of a traditional European family. The hurt look on her face as she realizes she has been abandoned when her beloved refuses to go against his mother's wishes will probably always linger when I think of this movie. So much for Europe's understanding. Chatterton is so good. I may not warm up to Fran that much, but Ruth makes her interesting. Fran is a human being, not just a bad person, thanks to Ruth. Meanwhile Sam, while nursing his wounds, meets up with Edith again, and her love and support has him making business plans again. The words told to him by an old friend at the beginning were true - a man like him will always need to be building something. Edith Cortright in the form of Mary Astor remains for me one of the most appealing characters ever.. That long, deft scene between her and Sam is my favorite. She says to him, "We? ... we?" in her you're-going-to-take-me-with-you realization and later says to him, "I think I must love you," to which he replies, "And I'm glad of it..." which on the surface doesn't seem all that romantic but it somehow works perfectly with these two.But then that dreaded phone call from Vienna from the abandoned Fran, the way poor Edith tries to shield Sam from that call, and later making her I-won't-let-you-go speech. She doesn't come across demanding or petulant, she actually makes sense. So what happens? Watch and find out. Remember Sam is a conventional guy, and conventional guys in 1936 "stick". I'll just say that never has a to-do over the placement of luggage produced such an epiphany in a film. I'll also say that for this to come only two years after the production code it is a very real treatment of marriages and how people grow apart, and maybe they were very different from the beginning, but only after the children are grown and they are alone again do they figure that out.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Does the story really end with the last scene of this movie? It almost ends with a riddle. For it is merely Mr. Dodsworth's turn to stay abroad with a lover, something his unfaithful wife had already done. For some reason, we expect the Dodsworths to find their way back together and stay together. Viewers will think Mary Astor's character is the more sympathetic woman and that Walter Huston's Mr. Dodsworth has at last found true happiness, but what has happened is that the narrative has switched so that we are watching infidelity from the reverse angle. When you think about it, the filmmakers are presenting a rather tortured love story that is complicated by the new choices that are being presented abroad.

Maddyclassicfilms Dodsworth is directed by William Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and Merritt Hulberd,has a screenplay by Sidney Howard, is based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis and stars Walter Huston,Ruth Chatterton,Mary Astor,David Niven and Maria Ouspenskaya.Dodsworth is an intelligent tale about the dissolution of a marriage.Sam Dodsworth(Walter Huston)is a wealthy Automobile mogul,who after selling his company,faces the challenges of his retirement.One of those challenges comes in the form of his much younger wife Fran(Ruth Chatterton).Fran loves Sam mostly for his position and wealth, she is embarrassed by his personality and the blunt way he says what he thinks.She want's culture and sophistication,they take a cruise to France where(practically upon arrival)Fran's beauty brings her many male admirers.Dodsworth soon discovers she has begun an affair and leaves her.He meets American expatriate Edith Cortwright(Mary Astor)who has put behind her the American way of life and just enjoys the simple joys of life at her own pace.The two fall in love and Dodsworth, for the first time in his life starts to learn how to live and in fact be his own person.However their happiness seems to be short lived as a jilted and frightened Fran begs Dodsworth to reconcile with her.The beauty of this film unlike others with similar stories is the fact that neither Dodsworth or Fran is painted as the villain.We feel Dodsworth's pain at her infidelity's,however we understand and sympathise with Fran for committing them. We can also all surely relate to some extent to her deepest fear,loss of youth and physical attraction.The entire cast is superb with particular praise going to Huston for what is one of his greatest performances.Dodsworth is a refreshing change from the so called relationship dramas of todays cinema.

Michael Neumann Sinclair Lewis' novel receives the red-carpet Hollywood screen treatment, becoming a well-made (but glorified) soap opera complete with marital break-ups and transatlantic shipboard romances. The idea of a well-to-do matron abandoning her comfortable marriage for the more exhilarating pleasures of worldly-wise Europe must have seemed daring in its day, but William Wyler tiptoes his way through the scenario with what looks on screen more like respect than enthusiasm, leaving his veteran cast to pick up the slack, which is probably just as well. Not all the characters fare entirely well by the film's conclusion, and the lack of a conventional happy ending to this otherwise straightforward melodrama provides one of the few surviving reasons to recommend it today.[ ...a belated postscript: after fulfilling my promise to revisit the film, in this case some twenty years after being underwhelmed by my first exposure to it, I'm convinced some movies shouldn't be wasted on kids. The subtlety and craftsmanship displayed on both sides of the camera were lost on me at the time, and the story itself was obviously beyond my experience. My rating has been adjusted accordingly, but the original review I'll let stand as a lesson in humility. Older, wiser, so forth... ]