AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (1931)

After buying & ballyhooing Theodore Drieser’s novel for the Hollywood debut of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Paramount soon scraped man & script, handing off the pricey package to Josef von Sternberg, briefly free between third & fourth Marlene Dietrich films.  Without much of a budget left, the book (remade at Paramount by George Stevens in his overly-studied post-WWII manner as A PLACE IN THE SUN/’51) was cut to pure narrative.  It runs three reels less than the remake, yet contains considerably more content.  Important stuff too, since literal prologue proves character prologue when Phillips Holmes social striver runs away from a fatal car crash, even though he's not responsible.  Poor family relation to a wealthy industrial family, Holmes uses that connection to wangle a job and a girl (Sylvia Sidney) at the family factory.  But after knocking her up, he falls hard for rich, beautiful upper-crust Frances Dee.  And, as per Dreiser’s social determinism, wish is father of the deed when the boy wants out of his quickie marriage . . . permanently.  Long in the shade of Stevens’ film, a UCLA restoration proves, if not revelatory, able to partially even the field.  Held back by Holmes’ inability to sustain a role thru an entire film, but much helped by Sidney’s appealing/sympathetic victim.  Especially in comparison to a purposefully drab Shelly Winters and her Oscar-winning yowls for Stevens in '51.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Best Drieser film adaptation by far is William Wyler’s CARRIE/’52. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/carrie-1952.html   OR: Check out Groucho Marx & Thelma Todd’s parody of the lake drowning scene in HORSE FEATHERS, made at the same studio just a year later.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/horse-feathers-1932.html