ANN VICKERS is a bizarre tear-jerker from the early days of sound movies featuring IRENE DUNNE as a woman who is well-intentioned but makes all the wrong choices in life, including the men she thinks she loves.
BRUCE CABOT is her first mistake, a man proclaiming great love for her but abandoning her not long after she bears his child. In a weak supporting role, she treats CONRAD NAGEL as a man she cannot love but values as a friend. He's not too happy about that arrangement.
Then comes married man WALTER HUSTON, unhappily married who finds Dunne a refreshing bit of love interest. She has a career that keeps her busy and stands by him when he is accused of mismanaging funds. He's soon imprisoned but she finds a way to get his case some political attention and eventually he is free to marry her.
That's about it, all handled in dreary fashion with hardly a note of music on the soundtrack to lift it out of the doldrums when it gets too soggy to bear. As social commentary on conditions in the 1930s and women's issues, it's a failure. Miss Dunne plays a social worker who rises to play an important role in the penal system for females.
IRENE DUNNE suffers nobly, but it's a weak vehicle for a strong actress and she can do nothing to give the film a sense of real life struggles. Chalk this one up as a failure, even if it was based on a novel penned by no less than Sinclair Lewis. Evidently, not too much has been retained from his novel.
Summing up: Not worth your time. Any film that wastes the talents of EDNA MAY OLIVER as a Duchess has got to make you wonder what they were thinking. It's her dullest role ever.
