Customer Reviews

Winterset

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Maxwell Anderson's classic play is reduced to a 77 minute playing time but is one of the tightest, tensest films to come out of the early talkie period. Acting ranges from excellent to outstanding (Meredith recreates his stage role). Although the film earned Oscar noms for Art Direction and Score - deserved, it excels most in black and white cinematography and editing. An excellent little film and one of the best of the early talkie era - it bespeaks eloquently of what was yet to come in film noir.

Maxwell Anderson's WINTERSET was a popular and critically acclaimed stage play in 1935. In fact, it won the first New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. In 1936 it was made into a movie featuring the young stage actor who'd played the part on Broadway - and for whom Anderson wrote the part - Burgess Meredith. Internet sources have it that the movie was a box office dud. That the film was allowed to enter into the public domain and has been issued by Alpha/Gotham Distributing, a company that specializes in orphaned p.d. titles at a discount price, probably tells us all we need to know about WINTERSET, the movie.

Or maybe not. Drawing inspiration from the (then) current Sacco-Vanzetti murder case while employing both a social conscious approach and a mixture of high-toned verse and street slang, Anderson's play is about a young man's, Mio Romagna, search for the men responsible for the trial, conviction, and execution of his father for a crime he didn't commit. Thankfully, a lot of the high-toned stuff, along with the downbeat ending, was chucked when it came time to write the screenplay. The harsh Depression-era conditions of poverty and hunger, ratty apartments and soup lines, aren't disguised, but they aren't played up, either. Still, there's an underlying sense of a desperation born of need here that may account in part for the audiences' initial rejection. Heck, even Edgar G. Robinson got to live like a swell for a scene or two before whatever movie he was playing a gangster in flung him back into the gutter. Add to the debit side of the ledger the fact that Meredith's Broadway co-star, Margo, reprises her role here as well. Grubby realism, two good young stars who unfortunately aren't all that physically attractive (by Hollywood standards), and a non-traditional story (does Mio chase these men for vengeance sake? to vindicate his father's memory?) aren't the traditional ingredients for box office success, or even respectability.

And yet... WINTERSET is a very, very good movie. Meredith was familiar enough with the Mio character to wear it like a second skin. Perry Ferguson (Art Direction) and Nathaniel Shilkret (Music Score) were both nominated for Academy Awards. Ferguson, along with cinematographer J. Peverell Marley, use clever lighting, camera placement, and compelling set dressing to brilliantly disguise the fact that almost the whole movie takes place on two sets. Marley did win an award that year from the Venice Film Festival, but that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar is an embarrassment. I really didn't know what to expect when I popped this one into the dvd player, although I was ready for something pretty dreadful. I was wrong. Beautifully acted, unpredictable and thought provoking, WINTERSET is one of the better movies I've watched in a long time. A very strong recommendation for this one.

Despite having read the liner notes, I thought from the publicity artwork that WINTERSET would be something gothic. It is gothic, in its bleakness, but is squarely centered in the Depression era of the United States. It was completely of it's time, and considering that the film was adapted from the Broadway play, it must have been daring, with sub themes of socialism and police corruption. (The play was by Maxwell Anderson, who wrote KEY LARGO and THE BAD SEED.) Perhaps that contributed to the film receiving two Academy Award nominations.

This is the story of Mio (Bartholomio - a young, dewy Burgess Merideth) trying to clear his father's name. In the first scenes, his namesake Father, played with riveting stillness by the painfully thin John Carradine, was accused of murder he did not commit, given no defense, and put to death. Years later, his son goes to the slums of New York to try to find out the truth.

I had to remind myself that this was made in 1936, so it is still very early in the talkies. The sets are a wonderful blend of realism and expressionism (similar to the famous stage sets of Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE), giving this a gothic noir flavor. Rain is often used as a "purifier" in stage and film, but here it is effectively used to create an oppressive humidity, a torrent of sludge. It is clear that film noir, Orson Wells, and THE THIRD MAN's Director Carol Reed all owe a debt to early films like this. The set elements are all here in tight proximity, the stone, the shadowed doorways, the waterways.

In fact, one irony is that one of the lead actors does look very much like Orson Wells. He plays the brother of Mariama (played by Margot, who is probably best known as the duplicitous woman in Capra's LOST HORIZON). Margot's transition to film is not as ideal as Merideth's, her style is more of the old school careful vocal production that may be the product of overcoming an accent. But she looks luminous and innocent, and fills the screen with a simple hopefulness at odds with the dark surroundings. The villain of the piece is simply fantastic... completely believably sociopathic without any extravagant ticks or frothing at the mouth.

This is pre-method-acting, but that spare realism is all here, especially in the performances of Carradine and Merideth. This entire film holds up as a moment of history - of social themes and thought of that day that still resonate. The Broadway cast seems to have been lifted intact (which should be a lesson to modern filmmakers to use stage actors instead of vice-verse). There are one or two flowery monologues, but for the most part, the transition from stage to film goes very well, and the story and script are spare and universal enough to stand the test of time well. This is a fascinating moment of film history which has -luckily - made its way to DVD.

Although, this is a good classic film, the quality is poor and very hard to concentrating and grasp entire plot due to poor printing.

WINTERSET marks Burgess Meredith's first billed screen appearance but not his movie debut, which was as an uncredited carny caller in FREAKS (1932). Bit players in RKO's version of WINTERSET include ex-Little Rascal 'Farina' Hoskins and a relatively unknown Lucille Ball. (The familiar tune we hear played on a barrel organ is Ernesto Lecuona's "Siboney.")

Maxwell Anderson's stageplay won the first ever New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It had 195 performances between 9/25/35 and March of '36. Anderson script was entirely in verse. The plot is inspired by the sensational 1920 Sacco & Vanzetti trial in which two anarchists were perhaps wrongly convicted and executed for a double murder committed during an armed robbery.

In Alfred Santell's noirish adaptation, Meredith, Margo, Ciannelli and Eliscu reprise their stage roles, the author's poetry has been changed to prose and the original tragic finale is jettisoned. On Broadway, Mio and Miriamne are murdered; here they find a clever way to get a police escort to safety. Any staginess is nicely ameliorated by several outdoor scenes that include dreary rainswept slums with cobblestone waterfront alleys.

The radical Socialism prevalent during the Great Depression's darkest days, and which is represented here by Meredith's anarchist father (Carradine), has in some quarters recently enjoyed an upsurge in popularity. Other "Winterset" themes (injustice, blind revenge, star-crossed lovers, the struggle against evil) never seem to go out of style.

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(6.3) Winterset (1936) - Burgess Meredith/Margo/Eduardo Ciannelli/Maurice Moscovitch/Paul Guilfoyle/Edward Ellis/Stanley Ridges/Mischa Auer/John Carradine/Myron McCormick/Fernanda Eliscu/Murray Alper/Paul Fix (uncredited: Lucille Ball/Allen 'Farina' Hoskins)

Winterset, 1936 film

This is based on a prize-winning play. The film begins in "a small manufacturing town near New York" in 1920. A man walks down the street, he waves to two other men and they get into a car and drive away. The owner of the car is afraid because of the papers in the car. Three men wait in the car. [Note the roller shade.] One fires a pistol and a man falls. Another man runs to take the satchel and his pistol. Later the stolen car is found by the police. Bartholomio Romagna is condemned for the robbery-murder, and executed. In 1936 an "Eastern Law School" presents a noteworthy case to its class to analyze. "There was no direct evidence against him." This decision by the entire law class creates a news headline. Trock Estrella has been paroled, he has only six months to live. "Only dead men can't talk."

Romagna's son came back east to learn about the report on his father's trial. Is there a man who knows the truth about the crime? Trock visits Garth about the news. Is Garth in danger? He tells his sister about the crime. [Is it radical to ask for fair wages, health care, and a retirement pension?] Romagna's son Mio meets a girl. A street musician plays music, children dance for pennies. [This provides a musical number.] A cop breaks it up. A judge asks for a peaceful dismissal of the crowd. [Recognize him?] But there is trouble. The rain ends the party. [The film becomes too talky.] Miriame tells the judge about Garth. The judge meets Garth and explains his past actions. Mio finds Miriame's family and questions Garth. The judge says the trial was fair, there was no error in the transcripts.

Trock says goodbye to his friend Shadow. He knows he won't talk. The Esdras home has some visitors. Trock questions the people there. Then a man comes through the door with a gun in his hand for a dramatic scene! The drama is interrupted when two policemen enter the room to look for the judge. Mio tells about the body, but the police find nothing. Was he dreaming? Trock has plans for Mio. Mio wants to tell his story, but they are watching for him. Can Mio escape with Garth's help? Will the sound of music attract help? Will there be an ironic ending to this drama so the guilty are punished?

This drama was inspired by the famous Sacco & Vanzetti case. The settings are static, like a stage play. It seems like an average drama set in the 1930s. Movies of that era had a song and dance for entertainment in the middle of the story. This was introduced in a clever way. The actual Sacco & Vanzetti case was far more complex. They were convicted in spite of their alibi and the lack of direct evidence [aside from a planted bullet and shell]. They got a "fair trial" but not a just trial. It was "fair" in that the rules were followed so there was so successful appeal due to a reversible error. Eyewitness identification was known to be flawed in the 19th century. But when a jury determines the facts there is usually no way to overturn the verdict. "Actual innocence" can not overturn a jury verdict. Is there any way to guarantee justice given human error?