...distinguishes this film from many of the other Fox films from 1930 to 1935. Add fine actors like Spencer Tracy and you have a great show. It was quite something to watch the "American Dream" become the "American Nightmare" for Tracy's character, railroad magnate Tom Garner, and for that matter his wife Sally (Colleen Moore) as well.
Preston Sturges had been writing dialogue for films since 1930, but this was his first original screenplay. He scrambled the chronological sequence of events in a story told in flashback for a corrosively ironic effect. The viewer is able to leap across decades of time in a cut and see how the characters have lived up to or more often failed to live up to our and their own expectations.
Tom Garner's story is told by his executive secretary and lifetime friend, Henry (Ralph Morgan), after his funeral, in response to Henry's wife's cutting remarks about what an evil person Tom was and why he was a suicide because of his conscience. Henry disagrees. Now Fox was not Paramount in 1933, so some of the story is a bit eye-rolling, especially when Henry praises Tom's bravery as a child for jumping from a great height into a local stream that almost led to his death. Being dared to do something stupid and then taking that dare is not something that is a test of future greatness. But the story improves from there.
Tom never went to school, and as an adult went to the local schoolteacher, Sally, to read the letters for him from Henry. She offers to tutor him in basic reading, writing, and math, and they fall in love and marry. The marriage proposal involves a cute scene that is completely narration by Henry. Young Tom is happy being a "track walker" for the railroad and has no ambition. Sally, though, sees sparks of future greatness in Tom and comes up with a way where she supports the two of them by track walking in his place and he goes to engineering school to get a job with more potential on the railroad.
But Sally has created a monster. Tom evolves from being an enthusiastic engineer after graduation to becoming all consumed with being the most powerful railroad magnate in the U.S. and loses his earlier gentle giant attributes. Actually, Sally creates two monsters. The second is their son, Tom Jr., who she spoils rotten so that he becomes an amoral loafer, getting kicked out of Yale. This sets up the potential for all of the disasters that come afterward.
Many have said that this form of storytelling was what inspired Orson Welles to write "Citizen Kane" in the format that he did, but even if it didn't, there is an overarching mystery in both films. The first from Kane, is well known. How did anybody know Kane's final words since it appears he died alone in his room? The question for this film is how was Henry privy to all of the details of what made Tom commit suicide, as well of the private details of his life unless Tom was some kind of chatty Kathy with his old friend and secretary? Just wondering.
Preston Sturges had been writing dialogue for films since 1930, but this was his first original screenplay. He scrambled the chronological sequence of events in a story told in flashback for a corrosively ironic effect. The viewer is able to leap across decades of time in a cut and see how the characters have lived up to or more often failed to live up to our and their own expectations.
Tom Garner's story is told by his executive secretary and lifetime friend, Henry (Ralph Morgan), after his funeral, in response to Henry's wife's cutting remarks about what an evil person Tom was and why he was a suicide because of his conscience. Henry disagrees. Now Fox was not Paramount in 1933, so some of the story is a bit eye-rolling, especially when Henry praises Tom's bravery as a child for jumping from a great height into a local stream that almost led to his death. Being dared to do something stupid and then taking that dare is not something that is a test of future greatness. But the story improves from there.
Tom never went to school, and as an adult went to the local schoolteacher, Sally, to read the letters for him from Henry. She offers to tutor him in basic reading, writing, and math, and they fall in love and marry. The marriage proposal involves a cute scene that is completely narration by Henry. Young Tom is happy being a "track walker" for the railroad and has no ambition. Sally, though, sees sparks of future greatness in Tom and comes up with a way where she supports the two of them by track walking in his place and he goes to engineering school to get a job with more potential on the railroad.
But Sally has created a monster. Tom evolves from being an enthusiastic engineer after graduation to becoming all consumed with being the most powerful railroad magnate in the U.S. and loses his earlier gentle giant attributes. Actually, Sally creates two monsters. The second is their son, Tom Jr., who she spoils rotten so that he becomes an amoral loafer, getting kicked out of Yale. This sets up the potential for all of the disasters that come afterward.
Many have said that this form of storytelling was what inspired Orson Welles to write "Citizen Kane" in the format that he did, but even if it didn't, there is an overarching mystery in both films. The first from Kane, is well known. How did anybody know Kane's final words since it appears he died alone in his room? The question for this film is how was Henry privy to all of the details of what made Tom commit suicide, as well of the private details of his life unless Tom was some kind of chatty Kathy with his old friend and secretary? Just wondering.