Art Vandelay
Like a lot of Hollywood movies in the studio-bound 30s, this is a stagey, screechy talkfest.
Sure, for people who didn't live in a city with live theatre, this passed for mature entertainment. But all these decades later it's just a relic of an era of static film-making. There isn't a single interesting visual shot in the entire movie. The plot barely exists. It's just two cranky people crabbing at each other for nearly two hours.
Frankly, the whole movie is tiresome.
And this from someone who considers Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf one of the greatest films ever made.
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.
fincherian
I don't know how to review this movie, because there's no one aspect I can comment on without looking like I'm singling them out over the others. Every part of this movie adds up to something so much greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, I suppose the credit goes to the director, William Wyler, though in 1936 I'm not sure he would have had the same kind of control a director can have now with casting a movie, deciding on a screenwriter, crew, and that sort of thing. But it all comes together for something so perfectly conceived, that I can't really just mention the story, or the performances by Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton; the writing, the cinematography, or set design.A description of the movie or even the type of film or genre it's in wouldn't do it justice in the way that I could at least describe some of my other favorite movies. It does everything right-it's so sophisticated, sensitive, mature, in dealing with the marriage of a middle aged couple going on their first vacation in twenty years together.Minor spoiler-it deals with so much, but if you were to describe the story, it's about how Dodsworth (Walter Huston) and his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton) leave America and really try to enjoy themselves and each other for once. But Fran is insecure about her age and her older husband, and this insecurity begins to push her away from him and towards, well, not necessarily even other men, but away from anyone.And yet, that doesn't come close to describing what this movie is really like or what it's about. It's every moment that's played so sensitively. It's got lots of emotion, but it's not sentimental. It's got a ruthless efficiency in building each scene upon the last, clearly giving each character different motivations and showing how their relationships change.I haven't seen this movie show up in many discussions or top lists, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything about the movie, whether it's under seen or under respected. TCM showed it one evening as one of their Essentials, which gave me some exposure to it. Then I read David Mamet's book, Bambi vs. Godzilla, which keeps referring to Dodsworth. In it, he says that it's one of a few perfect movies. So I finally bought the DVD and watched it in earnest, and it was a singular experience.For all the words like "mature" and "sensitive" or "grown up" that get used to describe it because of just how realistically it shows the dynamic of a marriage that is unraveling, those don't really describe what the movie is about. Yes, it is all of those things, and it is refreshingly realistic and attentive to the details of the relationships in it. More than most movies, and perhaps surprisingly so for any movie of its period. Or today.Dodsworth is more than those things because it's like an event that transcends movies. This isn't really even a review. I just feel like someone has to add, for anyone curious, what an incredible experience this is. It's a jewel of a movie. Whenever I see a movie like this, and see how most people regard movies today and see them mostly on their opening weekends (not to be elitist, because there's a lot of reasons for that, and I'm not using my interest in movies to leverage myself as having better taste-and I know people would love this movie if they saw it), I feel like I've found this secret. A movie like this is subversive to me, and that may be peculiar because of how much I love movies and want to make them, but I feel like it's an alternative to a life of working a regular or corporate job and having what I would (though I'm overstating it for lack of better words) call a mundane life.Movies in general, and especially singular movies like Dodsworth, are like secrets to me of how incredible a single experience can be. I have been thinking about it constantly since I saw it, and whenever I see a movie that even approaches it's greatness, my mood is lifted, my problems seem to go away, and a movie like this can seem like all I need or care about, because it's like an experience in another dimension. And it's so quotable-the dialogue comes so densely in pace and meaning, and it's got lines that will stun you.To borrow a line from the movie, if you watch it, you may become fascinated by it.
