Wednesday, February 7 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
Directed by Josef von Sternberg • 1931
An American Tragedy was the first adaptation of author Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 900-page behemoth. It was a fictionalized account of a famous crime that had captured the nation, the 1906 murder of Grace Brown, aged twenty, by her lover Chester Gillette, a fellow employee at his wealthy uncle’s factory. The film has become relatively obscure, lost in the shadow of the novel’s second adaptation, 1951’s classic A Place in the Sun. It came on the heels of von Sternberg’s string of successful collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, including Dietrich’s breakthrough, 1930’s The Blue Angel. Morocco followed, while 1931 marked the releases of Dishonored—and An American Tragedy. It was a change of pace for von Sternberg, one of cinema’s great aesthetes. Gone were the gowns, feathers, and glamour; this movie never could have starred Dietrich. The film had a sensational (and rather insensitive) tagline (“The Story of a Girl….Good Enough to Betray…But Not Good Enough to Marry”). Part tragedy, part courtroom drama, the film follows unscrupulous striver Clyde Griffiths (an impenetrable Phillips Holmes), who flees after his involvement in a hit and run. Clyde is given a position of power and immediately exploits it, pursuing his employee Roberta (portrayed by the luminous Sylvia Sidney) for less than honorable reasons. Her continued existence begins to inconvenience him after he’s introduced to a beautiful heiress—especially after Roberta becomes pregnant. Von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy is not particularly interested in class, in sharp contrast to Dreiser’s novel; it is primarily concerned with the soul, with the torment and tragedy of losing one’s humanity. (RIN)
96 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from Universal
Preceded by: “The Runt Page” (Ray Nazarro, 1932) – 10 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: VIRIDIANA on Wednesday, February 14 at NEIU