An American Tragedy (film)

An American Tragedy (1931) is an American pre-Code drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg. It was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film is based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy and the 1926 play adaptation. These were based on the historic 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in upstate New York.

The novel would again be adapted in the 1951 Paramount release A Place in the Sun.

Plot
Clyde Griffiths, bellhop #7 at a hotel in Kansas City, is the neglected son of street evangelists. Yearning for a place in society, he is dating one of the hotel's maids. One night, he and some friends are involved in a drunken driving accident where a little girl is killed. They all flee, and Clyde eventually ends up as a bellboy in a large hotel in Chicago.

While working there, he crosses paths with his wealthy uncle, Samuel Griffiths, who gives Clyde a job in his shirt factory in (fictional) Lycurgus, New York. Clyde does well and is promoted to foreman of the collar stamping department, staffed only by women. Fraternization is strictly prohibited, but Clyde, frustrated by being shut out of his uncle's social circle, soon begins seeing Roberta Alden, one of the employees.

Their secret relationship flourishes during spring and summer, where they spend their weekends outdoors, but when winter comes, Clyde pressures "Bert" to allow him to meet with her in her room, and he seduces her. In the meantime, Clyde has met the beautiful debutante Sondra Finchley, and quickly falls for her, spending less and less time with Bert.

When Bert discovers she is pregnant, she begs Clyde to marry her to spare her the shame of a child born out of wedlock. He puts her off, suggesting she return home, claiming he will marry her later. Sondra, meantime, promises Clyde she will marry him as soon as she comes of age in October.

When Clyde reads about an accidental drowning, he sees an opportunity to rid himself of Bert. He invites her for a weekend in the Adirondacks, where he claims they will marry. Once they are out on a lake in a canoe, Clyde tells Bert he had planned to drown her, but that he's changed his mind and wants to marry her. A physical struggle ensues, and the canoe overturns. Bert starts screaming, but Clyde swims ashore and lets her drown.

Investigating the incident, police find love letters from Bert that mention Sondra Finchley, and Clyde is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A lengthy trial follows, nationally publicized, in which Clyde staunchly insists he is innocent. But, despite his attorneys' best efforts to claim his last-minute change of heart proves him innocent, Clyde is convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

While awaiting his execution, Clyde is visited by his mother, who begs him to tell her the truth. He tells her that, while didn't kill Bert, neither did he save her, though he could have, because he wanted her dead. His mother, heartbroken, says it's her fault for bringing him up in evil surroundings, neglecting him while working to save the souls of others. The movie ends with Clyde being embraced by his mother through the bars of his cell.

Cast

 * Phillips Holmes as Clyde Griffiths
 * Sylvia Sidney as Roberta Alden
 * Frances Dee as Sondra Finchley
 * Irving Pichel as District Attorney Orville Mason
 * Frederick Burton as Samuel Griffiths
 * Claire McDowell as Mrs. Samuel Griffiths
 * Wallace Middleton as Gilbert Griffiths
 * Emmett Corrigan as Belknap
 * Charles B. Middleton as Jephson
 * Lucille La Verne as Mrs. Asa Griffiths
 * Albert Hart as Titus Alden
 * Fanny Midgley as Mrs. Alden
 * Arnold Korff as Judge Oberwaltzer
 * Russell Powell as Coroner Fred Heit
 * William Bailey as Reporter in Courtroom (uncredited)
 * Ed Brady as Train Brakeman (uncredited)
 * Richard Cramer as Deputy Sheriff Kraut (uncredited)
 * Claire Dodd as Gaile Warren (uncredited)
 * George Irving as Mr. Finchley (uncredited)
 * Arline Judge as Bella Griffiths (uncredited)
 * Guy Oliver as Simeon Dinsmore (uncredited)
 * Evelyn Peirce as Bertine Cranston (uncredited)
 * Harry Stubbs as Court Clerk (uncredited)
 * Nella Walker as Hotel Guest (uncredited)

Background
Paramount Pictures purchased the film rights for Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy for $150,000. The widely acclaimed Russian director Sergei Eisenstein was hired to film an adaptation, with Dreiser's enthusiastic support. When Eisenstein was unable to procure studio approval for his "deterministic treatment," reflecting a Marxist perspective, he abandoned the project.

Paramount, with $500,000 already invested in the film, enlisted Josef von Sternberg to develop and direct his own film version of the novel. Dreiser was guaranteed by contract the right to review the script before production, and complained bitterly that the Sternberg-Hoffenstein interpretation of his novel's themes "outraged the book." When the film was completed, it was clear that the Sternberg screenplay had rejected any interpretation attributing protagonist Clyde Griffiths' antisocial behavior to a capitalist society and a strict religious upbringing, but rather located the problem in "the sexual hypocrisy of the [petty-bourgeois] social class." As Sternberg acknowledged in his memoirs: "I eliminated the sociological elements, which, in my opinion, were far from being responsible for the dramatic accident with which Dreiser concerned himself."

Dreiser sued Paramount Pictures to suppress the film but lost.

Reception
Film historian John Baxter wrote that An American Tragedy "met with mixed critical success. The New York Times called it 'emphatically stirring," the New York Daily News wrote it is 'intensely dramatic, moving, superbly acted', but many other papers, recalling Dreiser's protest, found the film less intense that the original novel, which is undoubtedly the case."

Marxist film critic Harry Alan Potamkin commented on "Sternberg's failure to understand Dreiser's larger thematic purpose: Before the story opens [Sternberg presents] repeated shots of water disturbed by a thrown object. And throughout the picture the captions are composed upon a background of rippling water. Sternberg saw the major idea of the matter [theme] in the drowning. How lamentable!"

The film fared poorly at American theaters but was well-received among European moviegoers.

Theme
John Baxter identifies a thematic element in the struggle for human control over their destinies:

"Throughout Sternberg's films we see fictional worlds where an individual's established identity and position in the social order is so fragile as to be essentially illusory. In An American Tragedy, the beautifully articulated sequence of the police capturing Clyde Griffiths succinctly illustrates Sternberg's sense that life is dominated by forces so far beyond human control as to have an ultimately natural, even cosmic dimension."

Critic Andrew Sarris singles out the following scene for its thematic significance:"The one key scene in the film takes place in the factory where Phillip Holmes (Clyde) arranges the seduction of Sylvia Sidney (Roberta). He has forced her to capitulate by threatening never to see her again. She hands him a note when he passes by the assembly line where she is working. Holmes furtively opens the note in a secluded spot where his expression cannot be seen by the factory girls, and a smile of triumph flickers across his normally phlegmatic features. Since he is seen at [a cinematically] objective distance, he is irrevocably guilty at that very moment for his sexual presumption."