Anthony Adverse (1936)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) While Hollywood literary adaptations have been a constant in cinema’s history, there is a definite flavour to 1930s movies based on famous works of popular English literature: By then, Hollywood had sound technology and enough experience to fully realize costume dramas without breaking a sweat, and such films were the next best thing to a sure commercial bet given that novels were the only other popular entertainment game in town before the explosion of new media. (Even radio wasn’t all that common coast-to-coast.) There are some great movies in that subgenre, and then there are films such as Anthony Adverse. Adapted from a monumental 550,000+ words novel (five times the length of an average novel) by now-forgotten Hervey Allen, this film is equally lengthy at 141 minutes and it feels like it. Telling us about the adventures of one young man living through Napoleonian Europe, bouncing between continents as the unusually melodramatic events of his life make things even harder for him. (Napoleon himself appears, with La Marseillaise hilariously used as an ominous leitmotif.) It’s a big multi-decade historical drama, complete with multiple title cards throughout to explain even more of what couldn’t fit in the film. And yet, despite the length and the often-unbelievable accumulation of plot turns, Anthony Adverse itself feels badly paced, rushing through some things and languishing on others. It takes a long time for the film to even show its main stars Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland: Director Mervyn LeRoy did much better before and after, but trying to compress too much in even a generous two-plus-hours running time is asking for trouble—in modern days, this would become a miniseries. The number of plot points that come up by sheer coincidence is your biggest indicator of the film’s extreme melodrama. I won’t be too harsh on the result—after all, Anthony Adverse does have its charms if you do like melodramatic Victorian-era plot devices and/or the glamour of 1930s Hollywood trying to deliver a period drama. But be prepared for a long, sometimes frustrating sit.