The Great Sinner *** (1949, Gregory Peck, Walter Huston, Ava Gardner, Agnes Moorehead, Ethel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Frank Morgan) – Classic Movie Review 5429

Christopher Isherwood said: ‘It should have been much better than it was.’

Gregory Peck stars as a young writer who rescues a countess (Ava Gardner) from gambling but gets the disease himself as a compulsive gambler, in The Great Sinner (1949).

Unfortunately director Robert Siodmak’s fascinating 1949 MGM black and white drama movie The Great Sinner is all a bit staid and gloomy but it has a lot of points of interest. It stars a fine cast in Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Frank Morgan, Ethel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead and Melvyn Douglas.

Famed gay British author Christopher Isherwood is one of the two pairs of hands (along with Ladislas Fodor) busy at work adapting Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel The Gambler. The screenwriters also use elements of Dostoevsky’s life and his novel Crime and Punishment.

Gregory Peck stars as Fedja, a young writer who goes to Wiesbaden to write about gamblers and rescues a countess, Pauline Ostrovsky (Ava Gardner), from gambling but gets the disease himself as a compulsive gambler in a famous tale remade as The Gambler with James Caan in 1974, with Michael Gambon as The Gambler in 1997 and again in 2014 with Mark Wahlberg, also as The Gambler.

Sombre it may be, but surely no one could complain about the cast, George J Folsey’s moody black and white cinematography or director Siodmak’s Germanic atmosphere. And, in this golden age of the cinema, MGM certainly believed in doing their prestige dramas in style.

Also notable in the splendid cast are Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, Ethel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Frank Morgan, Ludwig Stossel, Ludwig Donath, Curt Bois, Martin Garralaga, André Charlot and Bert Hanlon.

The Great Sinner is directed by Robert Siodmak, runs 110 minutes, is made by MGM, is released Loew’s Inc, is written by Christopher Isherwood, Ladislas Fodor and René Fülöp-Miller, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler, is shot in black and white by George J Folsey, is produced by Gottfried Reinhardt, is scored by Bronislaw Kaper [Bronislau Kaper], and is set designed by Cedric Gibbons and Hans Peters.

Despite its fine production, it flopped at the box office, though not by too much. Costing $2,075,000, it earned $2,041,000, but lost $821,000.

Born in 1904 on his family’s estate on the Cheshire-Derbyshire border, Christopher Isherwood became an American citizen on 8 November 1946. He died on 4 January 1986, aged 81. Isherwood said: ‘It should have been much better than it was. But apart from a few good scenes, it was neither Dostoevsky’s story, nor the story of Dostoevsky.”

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990).

The cast are Gregory Peck as Fedja, Ava Gardner as Pauline Ostrovsky, Melvyn Douglas as Armand de Glasse, Walter Huston as General Ostrovsky, Ethel Barrymore as Grandmother Ostrovsky, Frank Morgan as Aristide Pitard, Agnes Moorehead as Emma Getzel, Friedrich von Ledebur as Casino Secretary, Ludwig Donath as Doctor, Curt Bois as Jeweller/ Money Lender, Ludwig Stössel as Hotel Manager, Ernö Verebes as Hotel Valet, Fred Aldrich as Casino Patron and Larry Steers as Casino Patron.

Lana Turner was replaced by Ava Gardner because of Lana’s extended honeymoon in Europe.

Siodmak said he was given an enormous script that he wanted to cut. ‘But no one took any notice so I went ahead and filmed it.’ It was cut to run three hours ‘but it was still too long, terribly slow, heavy and dull with the disadvantage that now the story didn’t even make sense.’ It was cut again to two hours and ten minutes, but MGM demanded reshoots for ‘a new and stronger love story.’ Siodmak refused so MGM got Mervyn Le Roy to do it. Siodmak concluded: ‘I don’t believe that a single scene was left as I had made it.’

Ladislas Fodor (1898–1978) was a Hungarian novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

It is the first of Peck and Gardner’s three films together, followed by The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and On the Beach (1959).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5429

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