Here is a film to rival most 1950s biblical extravaganzas in terms of sheer dullness. Anthony Adverse (1936) is a slow, stately epic with flat characters and trite melodrama. For all its lavishness and beautiful recreation of the late 18th century, it has no depth whatsoever.
Top notch actors like Frederic March, Olivia de Havilland, and Claude Rains are unable to give great performances due to being saddled with one dimensional figures whom the audience couldn't really care less about. March seems barely awake during most of his scenes. His character goes through what should have been interesting development, but in the finished product it never comes alive. De Havilland tries to make her character (an ingenue turned opera singer mistress to Napoleon) interesting, but the writing holds her back. Rains' hammy villain is fun, as is Gale Sondergaard's (though how that cartoony performance won an Oscar is beyond me), but they're not enough to save the story from being by-the-numbers dreck.
As previously mentioned, the costumes are gorgeous. The sets are large and teeming with detail. You can tell they worked really hard to bring the world of the novel to life, but all that money is for naught when the story is so boring. A definite skip.
Top notch actors like Frederic March, Olivia de Havilland, and Claude Rains are unable to give great performances due to being saddled with one dimensional figures whom the audience couldn't really care less about. March seems barely awake during most of his scenes. His character goes through what should have been interesting development, but in the finished product it never comes alive. De Havilland tries to make her character (an ingenue turned opera singer mistress to Napoleon) interesting, but the writing holds her back. Rains' hammy villain is fun, as is Gale Sondergaard's (though how that cartoony performance won an Oscar is beyond me), but they're not enough to save the story from being by-the-numbers dreck.
As previously mentioned, the costumes are gorgeous. The sets are large and teeming with detail. You can tell they worked really hard to bring the world of the novel to life, but all that money is for naught when the story is so boring. A definite skip.