Dodsworth (1936, William Wyler) (Patreon)

79/100

Second viewing, last seen 1995. Emblematic moment here has Edith see Fran gearing up for a dalliance and attempt to intervene with a single uncontextualized word: "Don't." Her implicit respect—no need to spell things out; this woman's sharp enough to take my meaning—reflects that of the film itself toward every viewer. There's no pretense that marital dissatisfaction represents some unprecedented breach of decorum, and heavy-flirtations-that-might-well-become-torrid-affairs get handled with an unfussy frankness that still seems quite worldly almost 90 years later. Dodsworth even somehow manages to visually acknowledge, early in the Hays Code era, that a long-married woman wouldn't hesitate before casually stripping to the waist in front of her husband; Fran's back is to the camera, of course (and Wyler quickly pushes in to remove Chatterton from the frame altogether), but I can't immediately think of another purely domestic, utterly non-sexual instance of nudity from this era, however tactfully concealed. (Compare and contrast with George Bailey leer-drawling "This is a very interesting situation!" and joking about selling tickets when Mary loses her robe.) My sense, without having read the novel, is that much of Lewis' jet-setting satire didn't survive the journey from page to stage (and thereby to screen)—though one hilarious-to-me remnant has Fran attempting to pronounce Kurt von Obersdorf's first name with a German accent, mangling it every time—but the cast imbues these characters with so much complex feeling that their enormous wealth becomes...not actually irrelevant, I suppose, but mostly used to purchase the luxury of going their separate ways while matters remain unresolved. Pretty sure I found Fran downright unbearable when I was 27, whereas this time my heart broke for the unseen young woman who clearly got pressured into marrying before she had the slightest idea of what she wanted from a partner, or from life in general, and wound up yoked to an iconoclast whose love for her is merely dutiful, with that grim realization kicking in right as she starts to panic about her advancing age. A gratifyingly adult drama in every way, acted to perfection by three of the four principals. (Paul Lukas gets upstaged by a young David Niven, even though the two never share a scene.)

Meanwhile, I continue to be flummoxed by how little credit Wyler gets as a visual stylist. Dodsworth's sheer talkiness betrays its theatrical pit stop (script's by Sidney Howard, adapting his own stage adaptation), but neither can anyone who's paying the slightest attention fail to notice how carefully and exquisitely every scene has been blocked for the camera, creating compositions that are striking but not showy. Hitchcock couldn't have wrung more formal suspense from something as simple as a maid answering the phone, with maid and phone placed in the left foreground, Sam obliviously examining a map in the right background, and Edith looking on worriedly from precisely between the two of them on both the X and Y axis; nobody's life is in danger, but the fragility of Edith's happiness is in plain view. Even more thrilling, in its own mundane way, are the ostensibly simple shot/reverse-shot close-ups of Sam and Fran as he leaves her on the boat, during which our view of their faces repeatedly gets obstructed by extras hurriedly heeding the call of "all ashore who's going ashore" (and there's also distractingly frantic activity visible behind each of them at all times). It's not often that I encounter a genuinely unique effect—especially one that's so easily accomplished—but if I've ever seen nearly full-face close-ups rendered so disorienting elsewhere, it escapes my memory. And then there's Maria Ouspenskaya's brief appearance as the Baroness: As she declines to give permission for her son to marry Fran, specifically because Fran will be a divorcée, the large crucifix hanging from her neck actually oscillates from visible to almost invisible with each breath she takes, catching the light on exhales and then sinking back into the darkness of her dress on inhales. Maybe Rudolph Maté (who only worked with Wyler this one time, unless you want to count Come and Get It) deserves some of the credit for that particular flourish. Either way, it made me gasp a bit. There's just no way to make a credible case against Wyler when it comes to thoughtful, inventive imagemaking...and since those images are nearly always in service to remarkably complex dramaturgy, I'm not sure how one avoids ranking him among the finest directors that Hollywood's golden age ever produced. I, for one, am gonna stop feeling sheepish about proclaiming as much. 

All of that's Ed, Dodsworth's ending is just a wee bit triumphal for my taste. I'd have bet a decent sum that Lewis wrote something entirely different, but apparently I'd be considerably poorer had I done so—judging from synopses, it's basically unchanged. Though I think that perhaps the novel frames it more as a droll "Here we go again" extension of all that precedes it, rather than as Sam finally coming to his senses. In any case, I didn't need to see Sam's boat arrive, or THE END superimposed upon Edith gaily waving.