-Devdutt Trivedi
Dodsworth (1936) is amongst William Wyler’s most outstanding films and is certainly his most underplayed work. The film begins with the quintessential Hollywood opening shot of the lead character Sam overlooking his estate in wide shot with the letters of his second name going into the distance along the diagonal plane of his empire’s structure. The sequence is amongst Hollywood’s most effective visual depictions and that too in an opening sequence, of the American dream. The film, an adaptation of the novel by Sinclair Lewis written seven years earlier in 1929, attempts at capturing Lewis’ eye for cultural differences between Americans and Europeans and portrayal of American values, while at the same time forwarding a story about the gradual separation of a couple. The film tries to maximize its own effectiveness in adapting the text to screen while at the same time keeping out specific complexities that would not fit into the Hollywood studio format of smooth storytelling overriding any social, political or economic concerns.
Made five years before Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, the film was the first collaboration between William Wyler and Samuel Goldwyn. Although it wasn’t a complete flop, Goldwyn hoped it would be a bigger box office success. In his late career interviews Goldwyn oscillated between him either saying that he had made a fortune of the film or that it was a major money loser. Both the film and the novel are based in between the First and Second World War, and although not optimistic about the future, (especially the novel which does mention Mussolini and Lenin through random references to create the general political vibe of the time) transpose the completion of the process of modernity denoted by a colonization of every aspect of nature. This process begins with the invention of the train and its cinematic depiction in the Lumiere Brothers’ Arrival Of a Train at Station and culminates (for the Hollywood film) in the American dream and the ‘reality’ of the values that it claims to uphold. This is largely possible through the Hollywood studio system’s preference for indoor studio shooting mixed with the rare ‘real’ location shot, which gives the audience a feeling of appropriated man-made space through the interiority of the locations allowing the audience to sense the control evident in the notated symphonies of Bach and Mozart.
The films tells of the deteriorating relationship between Midwest automobile tycoon Sam Dodsworth and his younger socialite wife Fran who wishes to go on a break with her husband and stay in the company of certain male European socialites, while he returns to their family back home in Zenith. Both the film and the book, told from the perspective
of Sam, attempt to understand the female emancipation within the tight bounds of European bourgeoisie society, a topic already handled expertly in the novels of Henry James. Following this the texts contradict this stand by portraying the woman’s own frivolous character- brilliantly brought out in the long take over-the-shoulder shot finale, in order to empathize not just with the character of Sam but with the masculinity of the novel’s author and film’s director.
The film upholds the American dream in the end, as is the dictum with Hollywood perhaps even today, but does hint at the colonization of the woman that it assumes. The sequence in the end, with Fran quite explicitly unveiling the neurotic, excitable side to her character i.e. suggesting that the woman was at fault, confronts any chance of the film being radical in its portrayal of bourgeoisie society and siding with the woman in line with the best works of Henry James, Luis Bunuel and Claude Chabrol, along with the works of women film makers across Europe and America.
Wyler prefigures Kane in his ability to use the wide angled lenses to create depth of field. Unlike his contemporary Frank Capra, Wyler is not content with the midshot and often choreographs sequences for the long take. Wyler, thought to be a no nonsense autocratic director, transposes his penchant for depth with a single cut away to denote the within and without of the frame. The film is shot within the interiority of the constructed Hollywood set, which works especially well in depicting the suffocating nature of European bourgeoisie society. This is particularly well represented in the passageways with open doors shot lavishly by Rudolf Mate (who had earlier worked with Carl Dreyer on both The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr(1932) and later worked with King Vidor on Stella Dallas(1937) and Alfred Hitchcock on Foreign Correspondent (1941)), to both depict the sprawling nature of the bourgeoisie space, as well as the lack of privacy. A crucial point in the film to depict this space is when Sam kisses Fran with the door open and the two are rather shocked on hearing the sound of the door being slammed shut. This discourse on American morality/values is in contrast to the developments in Fran’s character and her desire to be in the company of other men a couple of sequences later.
Both the medium of film and the medium of the novel present a succession of events. In the case of the novel, events are rarified by introducing the reader to new characters and spending several passages on character description. In film by contrast, rarefaction is temporal through silences, absences in sound, longer takes and documentary shots irrelevant to the narrative. The novel Dodsworth, consists of far more characters and events to do both with Sam’s professional practice or a detailed ambience, both social and political which are streamlined to include only a few characters. However the selection of these characters is a key to the process of adaptation. Only those minor characters that appear through the succession of events throughout the novel, such as the character Mrs. Edith Cortright , who it would seem is only introduced on the Queen Mary for her lines but later has a significant role to play, Renee De Penable and Baron Kurt Von Obersdorf, who is presented first as Sam’s dear friend and later as the man who pushes Fran to divorce Sam and marry him, are made part of the film. The character is a
process in the succession of images and any character not crucial to this succession is omitted.
Wyler’s thinking of the film is through mise en scene, the choreographed entry and exit of characters that helps portray narrative sequences with close ups as inserts. The curious sequences are those where Wyler suddenly focuses on the actions of the character, including the remarkable scene where Arnold insists that Fran burn the letter from her husband, ‘to forget the past and live in the present.’ Fran replies by saying that she is engaging with the future. Wyler perfected shooting this remarkable sequence throughout an entire afternoon. Welles would further formalize this engagement with the past, present and future, five years later in Citizen Kane, through the same techniques that Wyler had already used effectively in Dodsworth.