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37 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
Yet Another Gem from 1939!!!!!!!, 14 January 2004
Author: EightyProof45 from New Jersey

Robert E. Sherwood won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for his allegory-like satire Idiot's Delight. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the film rights to the play, and commissioned Sherwood himself to adapt his play to the screen. The result is this astoundingly poignant classic, which features Norma Shearer and Clark Gable in the third and last of their radiant screen pairings. Harry Van (Gable) is a vaudevillian touring all of Europe with his musical troupe `Les Blondes.' The group is forced to stay in an exclusive Alpine hotel when the European borders are closed due to the possible coming of war. A German doctor (Charles Coburn), a French pacifist (Burgess Meredith), an English honeymoon couple (Peter Willes and Pat Paterson), and an Italian officer (Joseph Schildkraut) are lodging in the hotel as well. And also checking in are munitions manufacturer Achille Weber (Edward Arnold) and a beautiful traveling companion of his named Irene (Shearer). Irene, it seems, reminds Harry of an old girlfriend of his, with whom he had shared a special relationship ten years before in Omaha, Nebraska. But she was a redhead, and spoke with no accent. Irene, however, is a platinum blonde, and has a very clear Russian accent. Still, Harry wonders if it could be the same woman. As Harry pursues Irene, probing her complex web of stories to find out about her past, the war develops rather suddenly. A nearby airfield sends out its bombers, and the garbled radio broadcasts carry the fearful news: war has already been declared. As quickly as the guests assembled, they must depart, as the frontiers are opened for perhaps the last time. But Harry is unwilling to go until he is sure, and Irene is unwilling to divulge… One of the countless films from 1939 to help it earn the nickname of `the greatest year in movie history,' Idiot's Delight is both acerbically funny and tragically distressing. Although the original 1936 play and the film version both predate World War II, the threat of war was a very real fear, a sentiment quite powerfully expressed via the disparate, sundry characters. It is startling and even more meaningful all these years after the war, as one can easily see how many of the unfortunate predictions came to glaring truth.

But aside from dramatic poignancy, the two lead performances catapult this film to first-rate status. Shearer is brilliant, quite plainly. She spoofs her number one rival Greta Garbo mercilessly, and uses her accent to its hilarious apex. When she tells her story to Harry, and he just gazes at her, incredulously staring, hilarity reaches its peak! She has turned in so many fine performances, that it is hard to single out any one as her finest (Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the title role in Marie Antoinette, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, her Oscar-winning role in The Divorcée, and Amanda in Private Lives are all strong contenders), but her Irene is certainly amongst the competitors. Gable, in a role that requires quite a lot of singing and dancing, succeeds admirably. He is a perfect Harry Van, complimenting perfectly with Shearer. The two have fantastic chemistry, and this was the last of the three classics they starred in together.

****side note****respected Shearer biographer Gavin Lambert singled this out as his favorite of all of the star's pictures. In one vignette he illustrates in his biography of Norma Shearer, he describes an occasion where the actress herself invited him to a private screening of the film in the 1970s.

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20 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Last Teaming with Gable and Shearer, 25 October 2003
8/10
Author: smithy-8 from New Jersey

"Idiot's Delight" is a good version of the play. Clark Gable and Norma Shearer do their roles with justice. This is their best and last movie together. Today, the movie may seem dated, but it wasn't in 1939.

Hollywood made several movies about fascism. Behind the story of a song and dance man (Clark Gable) with his troupe of blond beauties traveling throughout Europe, lies a story of countries fighting over fascism.

Like to make a CORRECTION: On my critique of "Escape", I said there were two endings to the movie, I was wrong. I was thinking of this movie. On "Idiot's Delight", they made two endings: one for America and one for the international market (they were already fighting in the pre-WWII war). The international ending makes more sense. You can see the movie with both endings on Turner Classic Movies.

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19 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
An idiotic stinkbomb with two gems inside..., 28 June 2003
Author: Allan Small

The play was stagy and stilted to begin with; on screen it was all so much worse. There is virtually no directing, and of the principals, only Gable has a clue what he's doing. Poor Norma Shearer starts out fine as the ingenue, but with no notion of how to play the fake countess, she hams her way desperately through the rest of the picture like a high school thespian. It's embarrassing to watch. Just when you think nothing could be worse, Burgess Meredith bursts in like a misplaced character from another set, jumping around and shouting at the top of his lungs -- a hammy stage actor who seems not even to have been told there are microphones. The voice in your head keeps screaming "Cut! Cut! Cut!" for the missing director, who's evidently out to lunch.

That said, there ARE real merits in this movie. Gable is disarmingly charming as Harry Van. The play itself is an interesting period piece with a warning about fascism BEFORE we knew the worst. And then, there IS a kind of weird, whacky fascination in watching Norma Shearer taken over by that BIG platinum wig, which is almost a character in the play by itself.

Finally, there are two outstandingly memorable moments which for me make this movie well worth watching. Gable's witty, winking, sexy, song-and-dance version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" is something not to be forgotten -- AND, the man CAN sing and dance! The other sheer delight is watching the !GREAT! Laura Hope Crews in her brief but masterful portrayal of the tipsy Madame Zuleika, whose cheesy vaudeville mind reading act gets more hysterical with every furtive sip from her hip flask. I screamed with laughter, and you will, too. Laura Hope Crews should be declared a national treasure.

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12 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
This movie is the best, 18 April 2001
Author: ddenning (drew.denning@msdw.com) from New York City

This is one of my favorite movies. Norma Shearer is incredible in this film. Norma in those Adrian gowns camping it up to the hilt. Who could ask for more? See it if you get the chance. This movie is right up there with the likes of "Red Dust" and "Cain and Mabel".

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13 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
A Mediocre But Intriguing Film Version of the Celebrated Play, 19 April 2005
5/10
Author: gftbiloxi (gftbiloxi@yahoo.com) from Biloxi, Mississippi

Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning IDIOT'S DELIGHT was one of the great play of Broadway's "golden age of drama" in the 1930s: starring stage greats Lunt and Fontanne, it told a darkly comic tale of a group of people staying at an Alpine hotel--including small-time nightclub performer Harry Van and con-artist and sometime entertainer Irene, the latter passing herself off as a Russian of noble birth--whose largely shallow lives create a ridiculous and often disturbing counterpoint to the world as it edges toward war.

Unfortunately, and although it is fairly faithful the the stage original, the screen version of IDIOT'S DELIGHT is nothing to write home about, and not even starpower saves it; indeed, it proved one of Gable or Shearer's few box office failures. There are several reasons for this, but the overall problem is that the production has the feel of a filmed stage play rather than of a movie; director Clarence Brown fails to endow the production with anything approaching a cinematic quality. The cast is also problematic. Although he delivers a surprisingly effective song-and-dance turn with "Puttin' on the Ritz"--the only musical number he ever performed on screen--Gable is essentially miscast as Harry Van; Norma Shearer, almost unrecognizable in a blonde wig, is relentlessly over the top in her performance as the fake countess; and even the usually reliable Burgess Meredith (along with most of the supporting cast) seems overblown and stagey, as if he were playing to the balcony instead of the camera.

But in spite of these significant drawbacks, the disturbing nature of Sherwood's story still packs enough of a punch for us to recognize how powerful the material itself is, and the vision of fools dancing recklessly on the edge of war has clear resonation today. Still, unless you are die-hard Gable or Shearer fan, you might prefer to catch this one on the late-late show instead of purchasing the expensive and out-of-print tape.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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11 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Is Norma Shearer a fake, or the real thing?, 22 September 1998
10/10
Author: Patrick Sullivan (sullivpj@sce.com) from Los Angeles, California

Norma Shearer and Clark Gable are cast in the roles that Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontaine made famous on the Broadway stage. It is also MGM's last anti-war film before the outbreak of WWII in Europe. A blonde Norma Shearer does a brilliant comic turn as a Russian Countess, and she is matched by Clark Gable, who performs a rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz."

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
artifacts, 5 July 2009
7/10
Author: auntielynn from United States, Texas, flatland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Not so much a "relic" as an artifact of a particular time and place -- and state of mind. While Sherwood's play was quite a strong (and sometimes heavy handed) criticism of the nature of man (and woman) as we approach an inevitable war; his adaptation for the screen is lighter, quirkier, and focuses far more on the American, Harry Van, than on the French weapons-monger (who has been radically Americanized and re-molded into a capitalist-industrialist.) Before we had the luxury of hindsight about Hitler, Mousselinni, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, fascism, Naziism, and capitalism, the focus was on the use of war as a social whip -- both restraint and stimulus. The play takes place completely in a resort in the Italian Alps -- but the film only gives us this setting as Act II. As a result, much of the preamble politics of the play are missing, instead replaced by an extended romance between Gable and Shearer for movie audiences.

The artifact (aside from a wonderful look at the con and film-flam of traveling entertainers and the crowds they draw) here is the political analysis of a looming war BEFORE we knew what WWII would eventually become. The "Anti-War" of Idiot's Delight is anti-war in general, not anti WWII. This is film is a pacifist -- not an isolationist. And, Harry Van's & Norma Shearer's con and film-flam are identical to that of the master politicians -- an attempt to distract us from what is coming with dancing girls, fancy stage effects, and mind-reading tricks.

It is also interesting that it was released in January of 1939 -- the bookend for that year's OTHER Gable war film, Gone With The Wind. While GWTW looks back at a war that pitted brother against brother and neighbors/friends against each other -- complete with all war's worst foibles and consequences -- this one is looking forward through the mist of mis-information and missing information at the war in Europe. It is forecasting the same foibles and consequences as the Civil War, WWI, and all other conflicts which wasted lives, inflicted unbelievable pain, wasted the wealth of nations, and de-stabilized the lives of all -- all for such laudable motives as greed, pride, lust for power, and jingoistic nationalism.

It's hard to believe (and yet believable, because we do have artifacts like this) that the conversation about the looming war in Europe during the late 1930s wasn't so much about Hitler, the Nazis, or global domination as it was about occupation, tyranny, and profit to be made at the expense of lives.

And that is what makes this film an artifact, rather than a relic. Relics are just old and outdated physical evidence of the past. Artifacts show our connection to the past -- because they tie our humanity to the same emotions, behaviors and thoughts of those who came before us.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Odd film about the start of World War II in Europe, 30 December 2007
7/10
Author: blanche-2 from United States

Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Josef Schildkraut and Edward Arnold star in "Idiot's Delight," a 1939 film based on the play by Robert Sherwood. Sherwood certainly provided fertile ground for Hollywood. Not only were his plays, such as this one, "The Petrified Forest," "Waterloo Bridge" and "Tovarich" adapted, but he himself wrote some wonderful screenplays, including "The Bishop's Wife," "Rebecca" and "The Best Years of our Lives." He wrote the screenplay to "Idiot's Delight" as well.

Not having seen the play, it's a little unclear as to what "Idiot's Delight" was supposed to be - a comedy? A drama? A farce? A vaudevillian and his troop wind up having to stay at an Alpine hotel due to border closing as World War II is about to begin. There he meets a woman he swears he has already met - the exotic Irene, a blond Russian, who is traveling with an arms manufacturer (Edward Arnold). Some years before, Gable met this woman, he believes, when she had a different color hair and no accent. Other people at the hotel are a doctor (Coburn), a pacifist (Meredith), honeymooners (Peter Willes and Pat Paterson) and an Italian officer (Joseph Schildkraut). War does break out, the borders re-open quickly - but Harry wants an answer to his question - is Irene the same woman? This film possibly was intended to be a high-class version of "The Petrified Forest" with people of different beliefs all stuck in the same place, but with Gable dancing and Shearer doing an imitation of Garbo, the balance is thrown off a bit. Nevertheless, despite some comments on this board, they're both very funny. Someone suggested Gene Kelly, had he been around, would have been good as the vaudevillian, missing the point that Harry isn't particularly talented, he's just glib. No one would have seriously cast Clark Gable as a musical comedy performer unless it was intended he be bad. Shearer goes all out as a black-gowned, platinum blond Russian holding a cigarette in a long holder. As Gable tries to pierce her identity, she regales him with wild stories.

So we have Gable dancing and Shearer speaking with a Russian accent on one side, and Burgess Meredith on the other, screaming his guts out about the coming war. In the middle is the medical scientist played by Coburn and the cold manufacturer of Edward Arnold, who doesn't seem to care if Irene has passport problems or not.

TCM showed two endings of this film - one for Europe and one for the U.S., the U.S. one totally ignoring the war. Watching both was fascinating.

Despite the comedy, the film has very serious undertones, but I wonder if they didn't get somewhat lost due to the power of the two stars. They both give first-rate performances, but one wonders if they were doing the same movie as Meredith et al. Nevertheless, well worth seeing.

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8 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting relic of it's age, 10 October 2005
7/10
Author: theowinthrop from United States

Robert Sherwood's anti-war play IDIOT'S DELIGHT was one of the great acting vehicles of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine. Set in an alpine resort hotel, it is set really in 1937-39, that period when most people felt that another general European War was going to break out soon. And the threat and reality of war spreads until the final minutes when (in the play) Lunt is pounding out "Onward Christian Soldiers" on the piano while bombers are destroying the hotel all around him. In short, the world will probably destroy itself this time. The play was a triumph for it's stars, and won Sherwood the Pulitzer Prize.

It has dated badly, like so many anti-war pieces in the 1930s. The novel THIS GUN FOR HIRE was also anti-war, in that the villain (of the novel) was killing Europe's leading peace advocate statesman to enable a war to break out. When that novel was turned into a superior film in 1942, the plot was changed into the villains as traitors working for Japan (the original novel was set in England, not America). The changes there save THIS GUN FOR HIRE, but no such changes save IDIOT'S DELIGHT.

Let me be honest here - I have seen enough bloodshed in my lifetime to hate war. Most sane people hate war. But occasionally war is necessary. When it was to destroy the Nazis it certainly was (and that was the war that was threatening in 1937 - 39). It may even be necessary against Osama Ben Laden. But there is a genuine fear created from those antagonists. A war over the ownership of some rocky territory is usually not a decent reason to mobilize for large scale bloodshed. There are legitimate reasons to oppose warfare.

People like Sherwood and Graham Greene (author of THIS GUN FOR HIRE) happened to have latched onto a conspiracy theory regarding World War I that they just felt was true. Both men felt the real villains in 1914 - 1918 was not the various foolish leaders of the nations involved, nor the generals or admirals, or fighting men. It was the munition manufacturers. This stupid theory was given impetus in the U.S. by a special investigation committee into the sales of munitions in World War I that was conducted by North Dakota isolationist Senator Gerald P. Nye. Given the nickname: "The Merchants of Death" investigation, it suggested that an unholy alliance of gun and war machine factory owners and big bankers like J. P. Morgan and Kuhn Loeb & Co. had pushed the U.S. into war so that their profits could go through the roof. In England a similar view was seen in the career of the notorious arms salesman and industrialist Sir Basil Zaharoff. A man from the Balkans, Zaharoff sold arms to all countries (sometimes enemy countries at the same time) and supposedly pushed the governments into the great bloodbath to increase his profits. As Sir Basil was (erroneously) thought to be Jewish, Greene turned him into the villain of his novel (Sir Marcus, the arms manufacturer). Thinking along similar lines, Sherwood creates his version of Zaharoff as Achille Weber, the Edward Arnold role in the play and film.

No doubt munition stock zoomed during the war (except for the companies in the Central Powers who lost), but Zaharoff did not have that much influence. Suspected for being foreign born, he was not likely to be heeded on life and death matters to Great Britain or any of the other countries he dealt with. His importance was as much as anyone who would have offered to sell some new technology in each country - like Rudolf Diesel, the engine inventor, who tried to sell his engine in England.

Sherwood's Weber dates the play. He should have stuck to the problems of nationalism or of economic warfare. The real causes for war were badly ignored - at least in this film. The whole idea of the plot is that everyone in the resort happens to mirror all the countries in Europe, and when the war breaks up they are forced to return home to fight to the death. Typical is Charles Coburn, as a scientist working on a cancer cure. He ends bitterly returning home, to design war weapons with his knowledge of science. That is actually far more effective to get the anti-war message across.

Gable does a fine job as Harry Van (including his delightful song and dance number - which one wishes he had tried to repeat elsewhere), more concerned with trying to guess the identity of Norma Shearer's Irene than the impending war. Is she that phony he met ten years ago or is she actually a Russian princess? Shearer gives one of her best performances, joining Carole Lombard in THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS in imitating Garbo (albeit as a Russian, not a Swede). Arnold's role is meaty but small, and he is properly untrustworthy - ditching Irene at the hotel under scurvy circumstances. And Laura Hope Crews as the tipsy Madame Zuleika, in Harry/Gable's first acting job, is wonderful as the world's worst mind reader. I give the film a seven - it is entertaining enough to hold your attention, despite your misgivings.

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11 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
well worth seeing because it's so ODD!, 15 July 2005
6/10
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

This is perhaps the weirdest Clark Gable film. First, it is an odd anti-war film that came out just BEFORE all the anti-fascist films of the early 40's and it's an amazing contrast to them. Second, it features Gable as a song and dance man!! Why they worked so hard to have him dance, I wouldn't know--the studio could have always rented the services of either Jimmy Cagney or George Raft or anyone of a number of other actors who already knew how to dance. Third, the over the top and bizarre role played by Norma Shearer--it's rather silly and reminiscent of Garbo. So, overall is it a good film? Well, it's decent but not great. Some may find it a little silly, but for those who love the Golden Age of Hollywood, this is a must-see.

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