Cem Lamb This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

vincentlynch-moonoi This film seems more dated than some made around this time, but despite that it is a favorite of mine, and one that I much admire. Deservedly, it was seen as one of the ten best films of the year and was successful at the box office. More recently, it was named one of the 100 best films of the past 80 years.Sometimes I'm disappointed when a star from a Broadway production is not carried over into the film version. Walter Huston was, here, but the wonderful Fay Bainter was not...and I'm glad, because she was such a wonderful actress I would hate to see her as such an awful wife! The story is a simple one -- the late middle-aged Sam Dodsworth (the wonderful Walter Huston), the head of his own automobile manufacturing firm, sells out for his wife's (Ruth Chatterton) desires. She is shallow and vain, and doesn't appreciate her husband or his life, which of course, has made her relatively wealthy. She pressures him to take her to Europe, which only allows her to take on airs as a sophisticated world traveler who flirts with European men (the first being a young David Niven, while Sam studies a light house; Niven popularity soared in a series of films that included this one). She decides to leave him for a questionable member of the nobility (Paul Lukas). Then an AUstrian. Meanwhile, in Naples, Sam reunites with a divorcée he met on the trip over (Mary Astor). They fall in love and spend some wonderful days in a seaside villa. Sam's wife's plan to marry falls through and Sam agrees to return to America with her. At the last minute...in a delightful scene...well, you can guess what happens.Walter Huston is simply wonderful here. Most people know him as more a character actor, but he was also a star in his own right. You'll probably despise Ruth Chatterton here, but she's good as being disgusting. Mary Astor had somewhat an up and down career, but she's very appealing here...probably one of her best roles.The supporting cast is interesting, as well. Maria Ouspenskaya has a key role as the old Austrian mother who says no to the marriage and tells Huston's wife she is old. A young John Payne has a small part as Huston's on-in-law. Spring Byington and Harlan Briggs play a slightly eccentric (charmingly so) couple that is friends with Huston and his wife.I struggled with giving this a rare "8", and I did. I so like this movie, and it easily earned a spot on my DVD shelf.

fincherian I don't know how to review this movie, because there's no one aspect I can comment on without looking like I'm singling them out over the others. Every part of this movie adds up to something so much greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, I suppose the credit goes to the director, William Wyler, though in 1936 I'm not sure he would have had the same kind of control a director can have now with casting a movie, deciding on a screenwriter, crew, and that sort of thing. But it all comes together for something so perfectly conceived, that I can't really just mention the story, or the performances by Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton; the writing, the cinematography, or set design.A description of the movie or even the type of film or genre it's in wouldn't do it justice in the way that I could at least describe some of my other favorite movies. It does everything right-it's so sophisticated, sensitive, mature, in dealing with the marriage of a middle aged couple going on their first vacation in twenty years together.Minor spoiler-it deals with so much, but if you were to describe the story, it's about how Dodsworth (Walter Huston) and his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton) leave America and really try to enjoy themselves and each other for once. But Fran is insecure about her age and her older husband, and this insecurity begins to push her away from him and towards, well, not necessarily even other men, but away from anyone.And yet, that doesn't come close to describing what this movie is really like or what it's about. It's every moment that's played so sensitively. It's got lots of emotion, but it's not sentimental. It's got a ruthless efficiency in building each scene upon the last, clearly giving each character different motivations and showing how their relationships change.I haven't seen this movie show up in many discussions or top lists, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything about the movie, whether it's under seen or under respected. TCM showed it one evening as one of their Essentials, which gave me some exposure to it. Then I read David Mamet's book, Bambi vs. Godzilla, which keeps referring to Dodsworth. In it, he says that it's one of a few perfect movies. So I finally bought the DVD and watched it in earnest, and it was a singular experience.For all the words like "mature" and "sensitive" or "grown up" that get used to describe it because of just how realistically it shows the dynamic of a marriage that is unraveling, those don't really describe what the movie is about. Yes, it is all of those things, and it is refreshingly realistic and attentive to the details of the relationships in it. More than most movies, and perhaps surprisingly so for any movie of its period. Or today.Dodsworth is more than those things because it's like an event that transcends movies. This isn't really even a review. I just feel like someone has to add, for anyone curious, what an incredible experience this is. It's a jewel of a movie. Whenever I see a movie like this, and see how most people regard movies today and see them mostly on their opening weekends (not to be elitist, because there's a lot of reasons for that, and I'm not using my interest in movies to leverage myself as having better taste-and I know people would love this movie if they saw it), I feel like I've found this secret. A movie like this is subversive to me, and that may be peculiar because of how much I love movies and want to make them, but I feel like it's an alternative to a life of working a regular or corporate job and having what I would (though I'm overstating it for lack of better words) call a mundane life.Movies in general, and especially singular movies like Dodsworth, are like secrets to me of how incredible a single experience can be. I have been thinking about it constantly since I saw it, and whenever I see a movie that even approaches it's greatness, my mood is lifted, my problems seem to go away, and a movie like this can seem like all I need or care about, because it's like an experience in another dimension. And it's so quotable-the dialogue comes so densely in pace and meaning, and it's got lines that will stun you.To borrow a line from the movie, if you watch it, you may become fascinated by it.

mlktrout I've probably seen "Dodsworth" 25 times in the last 35 years, and it never has grown old. There's not a missed mark or a bad performance in the whole film. As a character study of a man whose comfortable, happy retirement has suddenly become a nightmare, it's a jaw-dropper.I won't waste time summarizing the action since others have done so and quite competently. I will observe that Fran Dodsworth's "flings" (played by David Niven, Paul Lukas, and Gregory Gaye) are in various degrees of seriousness with varying degrees of slimy characters. Fran is a silly woman, carried away with pretentious notions of what is and isn't "cultured," and accepts no responsibility for her own actions. It is amazing that she and Sam had such a lasting marriage, unless she had simply never had the opportunity to become such a social butterfly before. Ruth Chatterton's portrayal of her as a status-seeking woman, vain about her looks and terrified of growing older, is dead-on.Walter Huston was a brilliant actor; I've never seen him in a bad performance. It's a shame he is largely forgotten today by the younger crowd who cut their teeth on action flicks and can't comprehend that black and white movies are just as good as (and often better than) their full-color counterparts. Huston played the Dodsworth role on stage and radio as well as film, and in the movie he brings to life the simple yet multi-layered Sam Dodsworth, who could give Job lessons in patience.And what can one say about Mary Astor? I've seen her as vamps and mothers and she's always good. Here she is no vamp or mother, but a woman on her own, alone but not necessarily lonely. She is independent, quietly confident, and she open's Sam's eyes, not only to the fact that there is life after a crushing blow, but to the folly of hanging on to something that will only kill you in the end.When Sam Dodsworth utters his final line in the movie, I have always cheered. Many lines have been written about love, but his well-delivered Parthian shot covers worlds that are to this day unexplored.

Robert J. Maxwell In the opening scene, retiring tycoon Walter Huston bids farewell to his staff and leaves for home, taking a lingering last sentimental glance at his automobile factory and the choking effluential plumes of flue gas spewing out carbon monoxide and other contaminants and I thought, uh-oh, a gloomy story of a man dealing with role loss. As in, "I no longer work, so what do I do NOW, Ma?" Wrong, though. Huston is tickled pink to have time enough at last to do all the things he's been putting off, beginning with a trip to the capitals of Europe. He's happy as a clam on the Queen Mary. It's his wife, Ruth Chatterton, that's having the problem.It's not having a retired man lying around the house all the time either. That's Problem Number Two. She's suffering from Problem Number One. If my husband is now retired, that must mean I'm growing old.Her spirits are buoyed on the Continent though because she attracts the attention of a number of younger men, beginning with the debonair David Niven and extending in time to the suave, hand-kissing Paul Lukas, showering every woman with his pheromones the way Dodsworth's factories bathe their surroundings is particulate waste.Huston notices all this going on and when he's ready to return to his Midwest mansion, Chatterton wants to stay on for a while in Europe. She stays on for a while. Huston sullenly returns home to find his son-in-law and daughter have taken over the place, moving things around in his den, using his cigar humidor to plant bulbs in, and whatnot.So he returns to Europe where he finds his wife and Lukas sharing a vacation in Biarritz. A bit of friction, there, exalted in magnitude when Chatterton learns that she is now, gasp, a grandmother! Man, is she having a tough time accepting time. Huston meets Mary Astor and there is an electric arc. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds.So far I guess I've made it sound as if Huston is the good guy and Chatterton the mephitic slut but that would be the wrong impression. It's an adult movie. Huston's character may be a bit too much the man of principle, but Chatterton's character has a touch of pathos. She's considerably younger than Huston and isn't ready for the kind of role discontinuity that's being forced on her. Huston has gotten his kicks out of Europe and he wants to settle down and breathe the cold contaminated air of his home town. But what has she got to look forward to? Stretch marks, cellulite, Botox, and a man who shortly will show as much sexual interest in her as in a manatee. It's not a simple-minded flick. Even Lukas, whose role is that of the seducer, is given his due. She invites him into her flat while her husband sleeps in another room and he hesitates because he believes it to be wrong, though he confesses his love for her.But neither does much happen outside these family dynamics and rather routine romantic flings. I found the acting stiff. I like Walter Huston but in these kinds of films he's kind of hard to take seriously -- those sly, knowing, sideways glances; the stern and business-like tone of voice that varies so little. Chatterton's performance is professional but no more than that.I'd like to give it a better recommendation because it has ambition and reach, but it's a little dull and talky for me. Others might enjoy it more.