An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy (1931)

The Story of a Girl...Good Enough to Betray...But Not Good Enough to Marry.

A social climber charms a debutante, seduces a factory worker and commits murder.

Date of release
1931-08-22
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (18)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Crime, Drama, Romance
Director
Josef von Sternberg

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy and its 1926 stage adaptation, which were inspired by the historic 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in upstate New York. Dreiser's novel would again be adapted by Paramount as the 1951 film A Place in the Sun.

Background

Paramount Pictures purchased the film rights for Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy for $150,000. The widely acclaimed Russian director Sergei Eisenstein was hired to film the adaptation, with Dreiser's enthusiastic support. When Eisenstein was unable to procure studio approval for his "deterministic treatment" reflecting a Marxist perspective, he abandoned the project.

Paramount, with $500,000 already invested in the film, enlisted Josef von Sternberg to develop and direct his own film version of the novel. Dreiser, who was guaranteed by contract the right to review the script before production, complained bitterly that the Sternberg-Hoffenstein interpretation of his novel's themes "outraged the book." When the film was completed, it was clear that the Sternberg screenplay had rejected any interpretation attrib…

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