Given its title and the year that it was made, Dodsworth promises to be a timeworn, stuffy drama or a tame comedy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is an insightful, surprisingly unsentimental look at the disintegrating marriage of a middle-aged couple.

Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a wealthy businessman who has sold his successful auto factory, at the prodding of his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton). They spend the proceeds on a lengthy European vacation, but they see the continent in different ways.

Sam wants a perspective versus America, while Fran sees Europe as a land of sophisticates, and an escape from her fears of aging. She collects a series of paramours after her fortune, one of whom is played by then-young David Niven. Sam's patience with Fran thins, as he comes to realize that his still lovely wife has become unrecoverably shallow and insecure.

It was a great role for Walter Huston, who had been able to hone the character in the Broadway play upon which the film was based. Sidney Howard wrote both the script and the play, which in turn came from a novel by Sinclair Lewis.

Huston's character is much more sympathetic than that of Chatterton's. Huston is very natural as an actor, not changing his straightforward character whether in Zenith, Ohio or Paris, France. Chatterton, on the other hand, is both dramatic and affected. The question lingers whether her false note is from her performance, or her character. It is the latter, and her courage at making Fran so dislikable is to be commended.

Dodsworth was not a box office success, and the film remains obscure today. It did receive seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Screenplay (Howard) and Best Actor (Huston). Richard Day took home the film's only statuette, for Best Interior Decoration.

Maria Ouspenskaya picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, in what was her first Hollywood film. She made a strong impression as the stern, wise mother of one of Fran's suitors. A veteran actress, her previous movies had been in the Soviet Union. She remained in Hollywood, and became a familiar supporting player throughout the 1940s.

Huston would eventually win an Oscar for 1948's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was directed by his son John Huston. Wyler's greatest film achievement came a few years earlier in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which also had a failed marriage (with the wife to blame) as a major storyline.

In both Dodsworth and The Best Years of Our Lives, the despairing romantic hero is able to rebound from his unfaithful wife thanks to a beautiful, available, and extremely nice woman.

In Dodsworth, Mary Astor has that role, as gracious widow Edith Cortright. Teresa Wright played a younger (and hence more naive and intense) version of the character in The Best Years of Our Lives. Perhaps Cortright is too perfect, seemingly devoid of the bitterness that festers inside both Sam and Fran. (77/100)

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings