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Anthony Adverse
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by Warner Home Video
Sales Rank: 21525
Price: $14.98
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Film adaptation of Hervey Allen's bestselling novel of a young man with a tragic past who grows up carrying out adventures across 19th-century Europe, Cuba and Africa.
Viewer Reviews
whenever i watch 'anthony adverse' on television, i wonder why warner brothers sought to film it.
for the many things that are huge advantages in this film, it boasts equally large disavantages.
for its list of advantages, one has to start with olivia de havilland. her part is woefully small, yet knowing it would be a prestige picture (?), bette davis supposedly wanted it. but davis was greedy. if jack warner had bought the rights to 'the hairy ape' she would have wanted the lead in that. no matter--de havilland is gorgeous and dewy. she is everything the role needs. she is matched by anita louise as the tragic maria, mother of the title character who dies in childbirth. and they have male beauty counterparts in louis hayward and donald woods.
for out and out acting, the film has claude rains and gale sondergaard as the scheming lovers that lust for the fortunes of bonnyfeather.
then there is the hyper-romantic score by erich wolfgang korngold, which is an experience in itself. it is helped along by opera sequences, one of which was composed by hugo friedhofer and it's hauntingly beautiful. plus the set design, the camera work and the costumes are lush.
so why in the world did the powers at warners give the lead to fredric march? march, handsome as he was, does not make sense in this role until the end. it wwould have been so much better to borrow tyrone power or coach the performance from errol flynn. flynn definitely could have worked this role out.
and on a minor note, there is a minor character during the cuba sequence that desperately needed to be played by either fredi washington or nina mae mckinney. or even theresa harris--with fear of having a white actor playing scenes of lust with a black actress. tough!!! the actress that plays this role is not good. she's wooden and she's got this middle european accent that is detrimental to the drama at this point.
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Anthony Adverse
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