Adapted from the novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and the play An American Tragedy by Patrick Kearney
A young man with a poor background moves to a new town to work in his rich uncle's factory. Ignored by his relatives who refuse to associate with him socially, he becomes lonely, which leads to a romantic involvement with another lower-class factory worker. When the high society people, including one beautiful woman in particular, start to pay attention to him, he starts neglecting his first girlfriend, preparing to eventually break up with her. Unfortunately, things don't quite work out.
Full disclosure: I did not read the play, so I can only compare the novel and the film. I'm a little curious as to how the play compares, but I'm so sick of this story that I couldn't bring myself to read it. Maybe someday. I think this is my second least favorite book I've read for this project so far (the interminable Emile Zola biography is still the low point). It's not necessarily a bad book; I just didn't like it. Honestly, I think I liked the movie better, although it still isn't my favorite.
In addition to changing the title, the film also gives all the main characters different names. Clyde Griffiths becomes George Eastman, and his rich uncle goes from owning a shirt collar factory to a bathing suit factory. The poor factory girl changes from Roberta Alden to Alice Tripp, and the high society girl changes from Sondra Finchley to Angela Vickers. I've noticed several adaptations so far in which the names where changed, and I still don't really understand why filmmakers do that. It seems to occur more in adaptations that are less faithful overall, so maybe the names are changed to warn devotees of the original stories not to expect the films to follow them too closely? I don't know. Regardless, this film departs significantly from the novel, but as far as I could tell most of the changes served one or more of the following purposes: to reduce the length, to make the protagonist more sympathetic, and/or to give Elizabeth Taylor a bigger role.
The novel is 856 pages and the film is just over 2 hours, so obviously things had to be cut. The entire first section of the book, when Clyde is a youth in Kansas City, is completely eliminated from the film. George mentions some of his background, which is fairly consistent with Clyde's background except that George's father is dead, and there's no mention of the terrible accident that caused Clyde, if not George, to leave Kansas City in the first place. The movie also cuts a lot of the filler parts of the book, which makes sense, but also makes it seem like everything happens much faster than it did in the book. There are a few lines that indicate that time has passed, but it's hard to tell how much. Overall, the cutting for time works, but it does eliminate a lot of the foreshadowing that the novel employs, which is unfortunate because the foreshadowing was one of the few things I liked about the book.
I don't want to spoil too much in case anyone's planning on reading or watching this at some point (again, it's not bad, I just didn't enjoy it), but I will say that Clyde/George gets accused of a serious crime. The thing about it is he was planning on committing this crime, and then changes his mind at the last second, but then it happens by accident anyway. This is true in both versions, but he is much more sympathetic in the movie. Clyde spends a lot more time planning it out and covering his tracks afterwards, and then, at the advice of his lawyers, lies at the trial to say he never planned it in the first place. George, however, barely has time to plan much of anything, and tells the truth at the trial. Also, Clyde seemed to have more of a way out without committing this crime than George did. The reader is clearly supposed to sympathize with Clyde, and in a way I kind of did by the end, but mostly I was like, "It's your own fault, you jerk." I felt a little bit like that toward George as well, but definitely less so, which I think is part of the reason I liked the movie better.
Finally, there's the character of the high society girl. She's not actually in very much of the book, so when I heard that Elizabeth Taylor was playing her I was a bit confused, since I don't generally think of her playing such small roles. So I was not incredibly surprised that her character was significantly more important in the film. Angela and George's romance is much more developed and committed than Clyde and Sondra's, which again makes George more sympathetic than Clyde. Sondra pretty much disappears from the book after Clyde is arrested, whereas we see some of Angela's reactions to the trial. Not that Sondra isn't sympathetic, since it's clear that none of what happens is her fault, but one can't help liking Angela more.
I don't mean to imply that the film completely whitewashes the story. It still touches on many of the dark issues portrayed in the book, if significantly less explicitly (not surprising for 1951 Hollywood). But I'm kind of curious how I would have reacted to the film if I'd watched it without having read the book. I couldn't feel too bad for George because I hated Clyde so much, but maybe if I hadn't known how he acted in the book, I might have liked him in the film. Who knows? Mostly I'm just very glad to be through this so I can move forward with this project.
Fortunately, the next winner was based on a short story, so I'll have a brief respite before the next long novel. So stay tuned for The Bad and the Beautiful, based on the story "Tribute to a Badman" by George Bradshaw.
No comments:
Post a Comment