User Reviews

This was Ruth Chatterton's finest performance and proof that there wasn't a genre she couldn't do superbly. First she conquered Broadway, then in the early days of sound she was bought to Hollywood where she starred in a couple of sparkling comedies before finding popularity in sudsy mother love films such as "Sarah and Son" and "Anybody's Woman" etc. She then starred in "Female" (1933) about a woman in a man's world - also "The Rich are Always With Us" put her in a contemporary setting. Who would have thought that her best remembered role, (and according to Mary Astor a part she loathed) would be as vain, frivolous, trying to hold on to vanishing youth Fran - her least typical role. It did not have the makings of "hot" box office - it dealt with marital problems associated with middle age, but it was made with taste and integrity and excellent work from the three principals.

Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston), general manager and founder of Dodsworth Motors in Zenith City, is retiring. He has many regrets but has bowed under the pressure of his wife's demands. She wants to see the world and experience life - she feels she has been a perfect wife, mother and hostess for too many years. They take a cruise to Europe and at first their small town origins (or "hickness" as Sam says) shines through - dressing too formally for dinner etc, but they find they have different interests. Fran fits straight into the ship's social life, Sam wants to learn how to enjoy leisure.

One night, on deck, Sam meets Edith (Mary Astor) an American divorcée expat living in Italy. He finds her a sympathetic and intelligent woman who understands his dreams. Fran is in the middle of a shipboard romance with Captain Lockhart (David Niven) - he wants to take it further but Fran is confused about her emotions. She then demands to go to Paris - she feels she has made a fool of herself about the British Captain and can't face England. While in Paris Sam becomes reacquainted with Edith. She meets Fran and tries to advise her against her friend- ship with financier, Arnold Iselin (Paul Lukas), her next conquest.

"You're simply rushing at old age Sam and I'm not ready for that yet"!!! Sam decides to go back to Zenith - Fran has already signed a lease to a chalet in Switzerland (she has neglected to tell Sam) but back home Sam finds it hard to function without Fran. The cable he sends her asking her to return home is answered in the negative. He decides to have Iselin tailed and goes to France for a showdown. Although Fran begs his forgiveness, she cannot reconcile herself to growing old. They become grandparents but Fran refuses to accept it - after all she has told her European friends that she is 35!!!!

This is an extraordinary film about aging and trying to cling onto lost youth. Ruth Chatterton is amazing as the dizzy, shallow and ultimately tragic Fran. Walter Huston is absolutely flawless as Sam Dodsworth and Mary Astor brings tranquility and dignity to her role as the understanding Edith. John Payne is also in the cast as Sam's son-in-law Harry McKee.

Highly, Highly Recommended.

"Would you lay off those European liberties with my wife!"-my favorite quote from Dodsworth! It made me laugh out loud. It was said in a rather melancholy moment when Sam is just realizing what kind of woman he is married to and his best friend's wife (who probably has always known) gives him an innocent and sympathetic kiss on the cheek. It was a wonderful tool used to cut the tension of the moment with just a little bit of humor. I will be using some variation of that quote in the future...it has lasting charm. Walter Huston gave a phenomenal performance in Dodsworth, he made a multi-millionaire automotive tycoon into a loveable everyman that we could relate to and sympathize with. Trust me, by the end of the film if he would have ended up with his wife I would feel a heck of a lot different about this story as a whole and that is all thanks to Walter Huston's portrayal Of Sam Dodsworth. The story starts with Sam Dodsworth retiring via selling his automotive manufacturing business to Union Motors. He gives up this very successful twenty year career, not by choice...but through a lot of persuasion (and probably nagging) from his younger wife after their one and only daughter gets married. Fran Dodsworth, the wife, is fighting off old age tooth and nail and has envisioned them galavanting in high society in Europe staying "forever young". The day he says goodbye to his thriving business where he was happy, they board a ship for a European voyage. No sooner are they on the ship than his wife takes up with some shipboard lothario played by a young David Niven. When he gets a little too honest about their affair, which they have been conducting right under her husband's nose, she rebuffs him and acts offended. The thing is while she is busy conducting her affair, drinking and dancing...Sam, as he promised his wife to try, has thrown himself with the kind of vigor he had previously only shown for work, into the sights and learning new things on their voyage. It is in one of those discovering moments (the first sight of land as signaled by a light in England), after enthusiastically trying to rally his wife to find some interest...that he meets Mrs. Cortright, played by Mary Astor. Cortright is a very different woman than his wife. She is mature, self-confident, world-traveled, and able to live independently. The have a brief but innocent exchange, that sets you up to understand how much better Sam's life could have been had he chosen the right wife in the beginning. Once in Europe it becomes painfully obvious that Sam and Fran are ill suited for one another. This culminates in a shouting match in a hotel room, in which Fran asks Sam to go home after she informs him that she has rented a villa. Sam does go home, but realizes that he misses his domestic life with his wife. At this point he hires a PI, to confirm her affair with some penniless bloke. He arrives in Europe, calls them both out...Fran begs forgiveness (shows fake chagrin) and the plan is to finish their European vacation together. It is not long before she is taking up with a baron, a handsome young Viennese friend of Sam's. Sam finally decides that enough is enough and they agree to divorce so that she can marry the young baron. Upon her begging, Sam stays in Europe until the divorce is final and he decides to continue to travel and see it all. He takes every tour, sees every sight...and it is in the midst of doing so that he runs in to our lovely self-possessed Mrs. Cortright again. She somehow convinces him to come stay with her in her little abode in Naples, where Sam finally starts to enjoy life again. He fixes boat motors, fishes, cooks, talks and dreams...including getting inspired to go in to business with the Russians on a transcontinental airline between Russian and my home town, Seattle! Then he explains to her how she is going too and how they are going to live out of one suitcase! It is in just that moment that Edith Cortright's dreams are plummeted because Sam's wife,Fran, is calling. Things have fallen apart with the Baron (In a lovely scene with his mother the Baroness, where she brings up the obvious fact that she is too old to give the Baron children. I loved it! It was just the comeuppance that the vain chit deserved.) and she wants Sam back. Sam apologizes to Edith saying it's his duty and like a puppy with his tail between his legs goes back to Fran where he meets her to board a ship back to the US. No sooner do they get on board the ship but Fran starts complaining and then not only does she not accept responsibility for what she has done...buts starts blaming Sam!!!!! Sam gets up and at the last minute walks off the board to have that life with Edith! Thank goodness too! If he had stayed with his wife Fran, I would not have been able to control myself...I would have been so angry! And like I said that was due to the phenomenal acting by Walter Huston. Great acting by a wonderful cast. Go see it!

I was looking forward to watching this movie but I did not realize how frustrating it was going to be. Everything centers around an unfaithful, self-centered, immoral, egotistical, spoiled, rich woman, and her faithful husband whom she speaks indignantly about to others, while she pursues her affairs. He becomes low on her priority list, along with her daughter and grandbaby (that she wants no one to know about because she enjoys deceiving others about her age.), while he continues to give her a chance after chance. The acting all the way around is very good, and I am happy to say that he comes to his senses and brings about a happy ending.

We've all done it, looked at our reflection in the shining surface of a new car. I can still remember seeing myself and making funny faces as I leaned into the chrome bumpers on my father's car as I polished it as a little boy. But those reflections and those cars grow old I don't need to do anything funny to make my nose look large or my face look funny anymore. That car has rotted past rust by now. And this movie is a study in aging and our reaction to it.

Mr. Dodsworth is a solid citizen, an okay, straight-arrow kind of man who isn't an angel and isn't a devil, just a plain good man with his strengths and failures. He has pulled himself up by his bootstraps and done better than most, building a powerful automobile manufacturing business and a strong family and bonds with friends. Upon retirement he listens to his wife who has never been satisfied in their little home town but wants to go to Europe where she visited briefly and which she now considers her rightful place.

The movie is the story of this fickle, foolish woman trying to flee inevitable age by trying to be what she is not while her husband supports her time and again with the kind of faithfulness born of his own needs and habits as much as old-fashioned morality.

Ironically, when his opportunity comes to find youth and romance again, you long for him to take it while you've been crying for the wife to wake up through the entire film. It is that balance between running from old age, embracing the accomplishments of a lifetime, and finding youth in love no matter what your chronological age, that drives the picture.

You know a great film when you lose yourself in it and start thinking about your own issues. What have you accomplished in life? What is awaiting you? What are you living for, what is worth dying for, and what would you do if you could, even at this point...and why aren't you doing it now? You will find yourself asking and struggling with all of these issues in the course of this film. You will see your own reflection in the shining surface, a mirror to examine an aging face, or a window, to examine the world.

And speaking of shining things, this cast is made up of some of the greatest names to ever work in film. This film shows why. Even across the decades, even across faded black and white, their voices, their expressions, still gleam. And in their smiles and tears you will be able to see what is important about the life you've lived, the life you could have lived, and the life and love you can still find, if you want it.

There's no bad guy or gal among the major characters in this outstanding film version of Sidney Howard's brilliant play that takes a common subject and with the help of legendary director William Wyler turns it into something special, one of the best movies of 1936 let alone the 1930's, let alone of all time. While Walter Huston's character may seem far too young to be retiring, the fact that he wants to spend some quality time with his life now that his daughter is married makes perfect sense. He's made his bundle, so why not enjoy it? A trip to Europe for the happily married Dodworths (Huston and the beautiful but forgotten Ruth Chatterton) puts a strain on their marriage, simply because freedom away from running a home and being there for her daughter has her pondering what she is made of. Now that she has time to think, Chatterton begins to think of herself as old. Make-overs, a new wardrobe and lying about her age just doesn't do it, and before long, she is seeing other men, and eventually, this ends their marriage, seemingly amicably, but with him about to find happiness and her completely lost in a world of pretension.

Huston's happiness comes in the form of the lovely Mary Astor, a woman so without pretension and completely down to earth in spite of her position in society. If ever there was a woman that a man would want to spend his retirement years with, it is Astor's character, a woman who loves to laugh, dotes on him without smothering, and is completely charming in every way. Chatterton on the other hand goes from the handsome but younger David Niven to the continental Paul Lukas and finally to nobleman Gregory Gaye whose baroness mother Maria Ouspenskaya, in one scene, completely sizes her up and annihilates her. No fool this old imperious woman. She refuses to give her blessing to a marriage with Chatterton to her son because of the rumors of Chatterton's sordid past, and in just one scene (in her film debut), the diminutive but powerful Ouspenskaya completely dominates the scene. Without cracking a smile, Ouspenskaya has the audience in convulsions of laughter as she completely takes Chatterton down.

With Huston repeating his Broadway play role, he pretty much dominates this film, and even as a rich, middle aged white man, he wins over every ounce of sympathy. Chatterton isn't completely one dimensional, and even if the audience knows she is getting what she deserves for betraying a man who worked his finger to the bone for her, they also feel sorry for her. The cast is superb, the art direction stunning, the music breathtaking and the emotion profound and eventually heartbreaking. Huston and Ouspenskaya received Oscar nominations along with director Wyler, but certainly, Chatterton and Astor were worthy of them as well. As a Samuel Goldwyn production, this is up there with his best, and certainly, his production company created many films that are still considered classics.

I have limited experience with the works of Walter Huston and Mary Astor, both of whom sell this one for me. Notwithstanding its 8.3 rating, this is certainly not among my favorite William Wyler films. I like it about as much as The Little Foxes (a low 7/10).

Ruth Chatterton's Fran is her husband's inferior mentally and morally. For me, the low points are when this pretentious woman is rather oddly gallivanting around with other guys in order to stave off old age. Her husband Samuel, who happens to 'adore' her, is no curmudgeon. It annoys me when a character I like is so committed to one I don't like for reasons that don't cut it for me. Fortunately, Mr. Dodsworth exhausted his tolerance by the very satisfying ending.

I would have much preferred more on the relationship between Huston's Samuel and Astor's Edith, two very endearing characters. I'll be sure to prioritize my films to see list with them in mind.

A critics' favorite, I found this a very annoying film. Annoying primarily because of Ruth Chatterton's character - an extremely vain, obnoxious person who cheats on her husband left and right and sees nothing wrong with doing so! Almost everything about this woman is annoying, including Chatterton's acting ability. However, some people like to watch annoying, nasty women, which is one reason soap operas have always been fairly popular. I am just not one of them, so this film is not one I would want to watch again.

The husband, played by Walter Huston, is a good guy, but not too good. I doubt if any man would put up with all the baloney he did, until the end when he finds a good woman, played by a very attractive Mary Astor. I only wish the "bad woman" was shown getting her comeuppance more than what was shown. Huston, meanwhile, as he always was, is fun to watch: a great actor of his day.

Being a story of a lot of people with loose morals, it's no wonder the critics all rave about this. They embrace the dark side, almost every time.