An American Tragedy
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It opens with the dedication, "to the army of men and women all over the world who have tried to make life better for youth. We jump to a scene establishing the fact that handsome protagonist Phillips Holmes great as Clyde Griffiths , working as a bellhop in Kansas City, is attractive to young women. Visually, this is unnecessary. More important to the story is that Holmes' character had the difficult childhood noted in the opening. This is conveyed, next, with the introduction of his prayerful mother a good performance by Lucille La Verne.
But, the connection is lost, and Holmes is left carrying an empty character. The "tragedy" isn't what happens to his character - instead, it becomes what happens to poor girlfriend Roberta "Bert" Alden another good performance, by Sylvia Sidney.
This doesn't mean director Josef von Sternberg's "American Tragedy" is a bad film, just one that doesn't achieve its potential. Explore popular and recently added TV series available to stream now with Prime Video.
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A poor factory worker, employed by a wealthy uncle, falls in love with a beautiful heiress but his happiness and promising future are jeopardized by a previous affair with a coworker he impregnated. Josef von Sternberg as Josef Von Sternberg. Theodore Dreiser novel , Samuel Hoffenstein screenplay.
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser: Summary & Themes
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An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser : Book 1
Edit Cast Complete credited cast: Clyde Griffiths Sylvia Sidney Roberta Alden Frances Dee Sondra Finchley Irving Pichel Samuel Griffiths' son Gilbert, Clyde's immediate supervisor, warns Clyde that as a manager, he should not consort with women working under his supervision. At the same time the Griffiths pay Clyde little attention socially. As Clyde has no close friends in Lycurgus, he becomes lonely.
Emotionally vulnerable, Clyde is drawn to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working in his shop, who falls in love with him. Clyde secretly courts Roberta, ultimately persuading her to have sex with him rather than lose him, and makes her pregnant.
An American Tragedy () is a novel by the American writer Theodore Dreiser. Contents. 1 Plot summary; 2 Influences and characteristics; 3 Adaptations. On one level, An American Tragedy is the story of the corruption and destruction of one man, Clyde Griffiths, who forfeits his life in desperate pursuit of success.
At the same time this is happening, elegant young socialite Sondra Finchley, daughter of another Lycurgus factory owner, takes an interest in Clyde, despite his cousin Gilbert's efforts to keep them apart. Clyde's engaging manner makes him popular among the young smart set of Lycurgus; he and Sondra become close, and he courts her while neglecting Roberta.
Roberta expects Clyde to marry her to avert the shame of an unwed pregnancy, but Clyde now dreams instead of marrying Sondra.
The Crime Novel
Having failed to procure an abortion for Roberta, Clyde doesn't give her more than desultory help with living expenses, while his relationship with Sondra matures. When Roberta threatens to reveal her relationship with Clyde, unless he marries her, he plans to murder her by drowning while they go boating, having read a local newspaper report of a boating accident.
He doesn't have the nerve to go through with the plan and freezes. Sensing something wrong, Roberta moves towards him, and he unintentionally strikes her in the face with a camera, stunning her and accidentally capsizing the boat. Roberta, unable to swim, drowns, while Clyde, unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative implies that the blow was accidental, but the trail of circumstantial evidence left by the panicky and guilt-ridden Clyde points to murder.
The local authorities are eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional evidence against him, although he repeatedly incriminates himself with his confused and contradictory testimony. Clyde has a sensational trial before an unsympathetic and prejudiced jury of mostly religious conservative farmers. Despite a vigorous and untruthful defense by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and, after an appeal is denied, executed by electric chair. The jailhouse scenes and correspondence between Clyde and his mother are exemplars of pathos in modern literature.
Dreiser based the book on a notorious criminal case.
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Chester Gillette was put on trial, and convicted of killing Brown, though he claimed that her death was a suicide. Gillette was executed by electric chair on March 30, Dreiser saved newspaper clippings about the case for several years before writing his novel, during which he studied the case closely.
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He based Clyde Griffiths on Chester Gillette, deliberately giving him the same initials. A strikingly similar murder took place in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania , in , when Robert Edwards clubbed Freda McKechnie, one of his two lovers, and placed her body in a lake. Edwards was eventually found guilty, and also executed by electric chair. The novel is a tragedy in the strict sense, Clyde's destruction being the consequence of his innate weaknesses: This novel is full of symbolism, ranging from Clyde's grotesque description of the high gloomy walls of the factory as an opportunity for success, symbolizing how it is all a mirage, to the description of girls as "electrifying" to foreshadow Clyde's destination to the electric chair; Dreiser transforms everyday mundane objects to symbols.