Review of Dodsworth (1936) by M M — 15 Aug 2009

In Which Sinclair Lewis Makes the Industrialist the Good Guy.

I think we're supposed to be okay with Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston), even though he Makes His Wealth on the Backs of the People, because he is at heart one of the people himself. Oh, yeah, he lives in a mansion, and he's a capitalist, and so forth. On the other hand, he is a man of simple pleasures who is not swayed by the decadent ways of the Europeans he encounters. Or something. It's also possible that Hollywood changed things; it wouldn't be the first time, after all. And I have to admit, I'm not big into Sinclair Lewis. Or Upton Sinclair, who is the same person in my head. The most awful book I've ever read in my life was Sinclair Lewis's [i]Arrowsmith[/i], largely because there were no sympathetic characters anywhere in it. Or rather, there was one. She did. In a stupid way. With about two hundred pages to go. Bleah.

Sam Dodsworth is the owner of a large American automobile manufacturer. His daugher, Emily (Kathryn Marlow), has just gotten married to Harry McKee (John Payne), and Sam decides to retire and tour Europe with his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton). It's only sort of retirement, I note, because the trip involves visiting with a couple of manufacturers in Britain and France. Still, while they're on the ship over, Fran meets Captain Clyde Lockert (David Niven), who convinces her that she's still young, attractive, and interesting to men. Sam meets Mrs. Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), who convinces him that he's interesting at all. Fran then goes on to live a riotous life in France with her husband's money, and he realizes that he can't live the life she wants.

I've talked before about how important it is that you like someone going in, and I guess that may be true here. I don't like Fran. On the other hand, I suspect that Sam never really got to know her until this trip. She was his wife who did what he wanted done and made him happy. She was mother to his child. On the other hand, they only had one child, so there's that. Was Fran likeable before? Did Sam know one way or the other? We launch right into the story, so there's no way of knowing. I do think we know that they were never so much on the talking.

Even for the decadent, things do not go everyone's way. There is Baron Kurt Von Obdersdorf (Gregory Gaye), who is poor but aristocratic, as quite a lot of Europe was in 1936. Fran, I think, sees him as living a wild, free life, the life she herself wants to, but his future is controlled by his mother (Maria Ouspenskaya). Most of the friends Fran has are probably using her for her ability to finance trips to Lake Geneva and Biarritz and so forth. Sam has a couple of old friends who seem to have known him from before his days as a multimillionaire, and they make him happy. He gets along just fine with Edith. Sam has the money, but it's how he thinks of it that seems to matter.

It's not a great movie. It frankly comes across as a little heavyhanded at times. The filming is nothing special, and the dialogue doesn't exactly zing. I only kind of like Sam, and he's the most likeable person in the movie. Except a couple of people who don't really matter. Those friends, and I guess his daughter. But the fact is, Sam does expect the whole world to revolve around him. His needs are simpler than Fran's, and he's not so pretentious. He's okay with being a middle-aged man, and Fran wants to stay young and beautiful forever. I just think that none of these people are really worth taking the time to sympathize with.