Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Cineanalyst "Anthony Adverse" is the kind of long costume drama and epic romance that Academy voters love (with four, it won the most awards for films of 1936, and tied for the most nominations with seven) and studios seem to believe (or rationalize) lend them prestige, especially when their box office doesn't otherwise justify their costs. Technically--classical continuity editing, glossy cinematography with a deep depth of field, large sets, a dramatic score and glamorous costumes--it's the crème de la crème of Hollywood filmmaking at the time. While there's plenty to like about that, the style is so mercantile but lacking the adventurousness suitable to a narrative spanning half a lifetime and three continents, preceding the Declaration of Independence and ending during the Napoleonic Wars. It tends to be prosaic, as is the story adapted from prose--swollen with episodic diversions, contrivances and lurid melodrama, which is ultimately over-long and trite--a spiritless adaptation of a novel, reportedly, concerning a spiritual journey.Besides some bad rear-projection and the obviousness of some other special effects, this is a pretty picture. I love the "Goodbye, Anthony" shots of Angela (Olivia de Havilland) turning away teary eyed and Anthony (Fredric March) walking down the corridor at the opera. Throughout, camera movement is limited mostly to brief tracking shots, but they flow well. Some shots exploit depth of field well by being framed through windows--look at all those shots where characters stand by such frames--and by focusing on the background but partially blocking it with foreground characters or objects. Although burdened by its convoluted plot and story, the pacing is an adequate average shot length of about 8.7 seconds according to my count. Classical continuity editing is adhered to with plentiful crosscutting, eyeline matches and shot/reverse shots, and the musical score helps, including leitmotifs, which I especially enjoyed for Don Luis (Claude Rains) sword fighting in the film's first love-triangle episode. Music is essentially constant, operatic and even a dominant force in this one, with the film's climax appropriately occurring at the theatre--opera within opera.Then, there's the episodic, crisscrossing-continents plot that spends nearly two-and-a-half hours following a protagonist from his conception to his being en route to America with his own son and still doesn't resolve everything, including his spiritual restoration. Anthony, indeed, faces much adversity--born of adultery, committing it himself, orphaned, traded from merchant to church to merchant, Cuban outlaw, African slave trader, lost wife, unknown relatives, conniving cartoony enemies trying to thwart him at every turn--but he's still a greedy colonialist in the end, not a man of God like the Catholic priests he befriends. He's an unlikable hero. The reliance on title cards for the passage of time, although they nicely overlay imagery, also contribute to the plodding plot, and there are far too many contrivances where Anthony repeatedly comes in contact conveniently with the right person needed to advance the narrative. Although Rains, cackling and chewing scenery, and Oscar-winner Gale Sondergaard, intermittently seething and grimacing as though preparing to hiss, are somewhat more entertaining than the leads and supposedly-good characters, as they revel in their misdeeds, but they're over-the-top, one-dimensional characterizations. Ultimately, this is also just another hackneyed, morally hypocritical melodrama, marginalizing its servants and slaves, concerning itself with the problems of wealthy people, self-serving in its glamorization of a businessman who, like many of the studio heads of Hollywood, left Europe for America in the pursuit of fortune.(Note: Among the film's mirror shots, one of the title cards overlays young Anthony's reflection in water, and a pivotal scene turns on slave-trader Anthony being disgusted seeing himself in a mirror. By contrast, an earlier composite shot where Denis sees Don Luis reflected in his wine glass is rather poorly done.)

JohnHowardReid Copyright 15 July 1936 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Strand, 26 August 1936. U.K. release: September 1936. Australian release: 18 November 1936. Sydney opening at The State (ran 4 weeks). Melbourne opening at The Regent: 1 January 1937. Australian length: 12,573 feet. U.S. length: 12,250 feet. 15 reels. 136 minutes.SYNOPSIS: An adventurer sweeps through 18th century France, Italy, Scotland, Cuba and America and back, winning fame, fortune — and finally girl.NOTES: Gale Sondergaard won the year's prestigious Hollywood award for Supporting Actress (defeating Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy, Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey, Bonita Granville in These Three, and Maria Ouspenskaya in Dodsworth).Tony Gaudio carried off the Cinematography award (defeating Victor Milner's The General Died At Dawn, and George Folsey's The Gorgeous Hussy).Ralph Dawson won the award for Film Editing (overcoming a particularly strong field: Edward Curtiss for Come And Get It; William S. Gray for The Great Ziegfeld; Barbara McLean for Lloyds of London; Conrad A. Nervig for A Tale of Two Cities; and Otto Meyer for Theodora Goes Wild).Korngold and Forbstein won the award for Best Music Score (defeating Max Steiner who was nominated twice — for The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Garden of Allah; Werner Janssen — The General Died At Dawn; and Nathaniel Shilkret for Winterset).Anthony Adverse was also nominated for Best Picture (won by The Great Ziegfeld); Assistant Director (won by Jack Sullivan for The Charge of the Light Brigade); and Art Direction (Anton Grot lost to Richard Day's Dodsworth).Despite a harsh review in the influential New York Times, the movie was voted 8th in The Film Daily annual poll of U.S. film critics.COMMENT: From its opening shot of a team of horses being ridden into the camera, this is a film that grips the attention. The story is told at a cracking pace and it is directed with tremendous sweep and vigor. The pace never lets up and the players make the characters so interesting, the sets are so attractive, the costumes so colorful and Korngold's Oscar-winning music score so grand (in every sense of the word), one is genuinely sorry to see the film finish. True, outrageous liberties are taken with coincidence and some of the events are downright incredible with sub-titles glossing over some particularly awkward continuity gaps, but frankly who cares?The hero lives up to his invented name. His whole life is a series of adversities taking him from one far-flung port to another. Fredric March makes a late entrance, but he more than makes up for the delay by his powerful portrayal. Although one does not usually picture him as a romantic hero, he is in fact perfectly cast. Despite the platitudes and occasional sermonizing of the dialogue, he makes the central character a figure of tremendous strength and sympathy.A brilliant roster of support players lend their weight to the sweep and vigor of the film's many arresting incidents. Among the most memorable: Luis Alberni giving his greatest performance ever in one of the film's most imaginative sketches, the story of the servant overwhelmed to a state of madness by sudden wealth; Claude Rains, a dancing aristocrat, one of the most rounded characters in the film, enmeshed by his momentary soft-heartedness into plotting with Gale Sondergaard, here giving a characteristic portrayal of avaricious, ruthless deception and deceit which won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (this was the first time the Oscar was given in this category — and it was her first film too!); George E. Stone, "the best servant I ever had", gives a most uncharacteristic and indeed unrecognizable yet brilliantly effective portrait of Rains' evil accomplice, Sancho; J. Carroll Naish as the French major who arrests Adverse; Rollo Lloyd, an unforgettably Machiavellian study of Napoleon; Anita Louise, the ill-fated Maria; Louis Hayward, the dashing lover; Edmund Gwenn, the canny proprietor of Casa da Bonnyfeather; Akim Tamiroff, the sybaritic Carlo Cibo; Steffi Duna, perhaps overdoing the evil facial contortions as a ruthless native girl; Addison Richards in a most uncharacteristic role and almost unrecognizable at first as a slave trader. William Ricciardi has a splendid cameo as the talkative coachman who converses with Adverse in front of a speeding process screen. Ralph Morgan's part is small and Donald Woods does not have much to do either (fortunately).Credits are remarkable. The film editing, which deservedly won an Academy Award for Ralph Dawson, is both sharp and smooth. The superbly atmospheric photography gained an Academy Award for Tony Gaudio. The sets are some of the most visually impressive ever seen. The costumes, Korngold's symphonic score, the snatches of opera, the sets bustling with extras, the tremendous style with which it has all been directed, the deft compositions and adroit camera movements forming images that linger in the mind — absolutely no expense has been spared. One's only complaint is that Olivia De Havilland seems a bit old for the Angela of the earlier part of the film — but she does make a charming Mademoiselle George (no doubt her singing voice is dubbed, but it's by no means obvious)!

joseph23006 The book by Herve Allen, a Pittsburgher like myself, is an excellent read, and the movie sticks to the narrative closer than most films of the time did to their source material. However (there is always the 'however'), Warner Brothers only filmed 3/4 of the story, maybe 800 pages. Anthony goes to America and eventually dies by his own hand chopping down a tree. Had the whole story been filmed, it would have rivaled GWTW in length and in Academy Awards. The imagery of a tree is the important element: subtle in the film, more defined in the book. The seed (under the code) is planted, it sprouts, it grows, it blossoms, it matures, then it dies. The constant is the Madonna in the cathedral shaped box.The Korngold score is one of the greatest ever, operatic, underpinning each important word that is spoken, i.e. 'No father, no mother, no name!', but also communicates what the code at the time did not want movies to show.

Robert J. Maxwell This jumbo story of a man's ups and downs in Napoleonic Europe -- and Cuba and Africa -- appeared as a novel in the depths of the Great Depression, when people must have had a lot of time to read. I doubt that it's much read today because its appeal is for such a limited audience. The film adapted from it is more than two hours long and pretty dull.It was directed by a seasoned pro but you wouldn't know it. The casting and editing are clumsy, and everyone except Anthony Adverse (Frederick March) overacts. You expect a bit of ham from performers like J. Carrol Naish but not from the delicate and beautiful Olivia De Havilland. (Wardrobe has at least given her some daring necklines, which didn't happen often.) The plot? An illegitimate boy starts out with nothing, grows up, gains power and wealth, realizes it doesn't mean much, and takes off with his son to start a new life in a New World.Casting got the two leads right. March and De Havilland look right for their parts. But the rest of the cast -- well. As is usual in these epics, there are good people and bad people. Aside from a few harmless comics. You know how you can tell the good from the bad here? The good look good; the bad look ugly. Take the greedy housekeeper in the millionaire's estate, Gail Sondergaard. Her every smile is an evil sneer. Those teeth could gnaw their way through an anchor chain in no time. She does her best to cheat March out of his inheritance and, failing that, she marries a Spanish Count by means of extortion.A bonus point for the score. When you get tired of watching Frederick March wrestling with his conscience, or the supporting players conniving to screw up his life, you can listen to Eric Wolfgang Korngold's magnificent music.