Listonixio
Fresh and Exciting
ChanFamous
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
filippaberry84
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
malvernp
If you are at this site and reading about "Peter Ibbetson"-----congratulations on having an exotic taste in films coupled with a deep-seated fascination with romance, fantasy, destiny and the power of love to conquer the most formidable of difficulties! We have seen a number of films from Hollywood's Golden Age that touched upon similar themes. From "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934) to "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941), we suffered along with sympathetic lovers whose path to true fulfillment was strewn with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But in the end---somehow-----the force of love overcame every problem to ultimately allow for what was meant to be.These stories are ageless and have appeared as recently as "Somewhere In Time" (1980) and "Meet Joe Black" (1998)---itself a reworking of "Death Takes a Holiday." "Peter Ibbetson" may be one of the very best films to explore the force of destiny on young lovers linked from childhood to be together "forever." The beauty of this film is in its design, execution and performances.Henry Hathaway, the director, worked with Gary Cooper earlier in 1935 in the rousing action adventure "Lives of a Bengal Lancer." Are there two more dissimilar films than these? It is a tribute to Hathaway's skill and artistry that he could make both stories work so well when they were completed almost at the same time.Cooper excelled in portraying sensitive characters ("Pride of the Yankees" (1942), "Sergeant York" (1941), etc.) and Peter Ibbetson was well within his range of projecting an introspective romantic hero whose great love must be found in the world of dreams. It is a fine, deeply felt performance.Ann Harding, not well known today as a romantic actress, captures the complexity and subtlety of the story. Her ability to will the Cooper character into believing that their love must persist even if it exists only in their own imagination is both powerful and enduring.When contemporary critics take shots at the old Hollywood Studio System as nothing more than a glorified factory grinding out entertainment fodder for the masses, they ought to take a look at this strange, moving and truly unusual film. Its creators probably knew going in that it was not likely to be a box office hit given the nature of the subject matter. The fact that it was made at all and in such a sumptuous manner is an excellent tribute to the taste of the powers that be at Paramount.Seek out "Peter Ibbetson," You will be transported to a world that no longer exists---and into a story that requires the viewer to be a real romantic with great imagination. It will reward you with a deeply touching tale where true love finally wins out under the most extraordinary of circumstances. What more need be said?
Nicholas Rhodes
I imagine this is exactly the sort of film that if you saw it at an impressionable age in your youth, it would make a lasting impression on you for the rest of your life. As I am not old enough to have been young when the film came out I cannot vouch for this. Nevertheless, I have possessed this film for several years on VHS and generally view it every 24 months or so. Picture and sound quality are below par as to be expected for a film of this age. I see that a DVD is now available but only as part of a boxed set and I don't fancy the idea of having to purchase a whose set, just to obtain one DVD !! With repeated viewings I have grown to like the film more. I originally only liked the first half and thought the second half to be a little boring but now I find that it is more watcheable. The thing is, there are unfortunately very few of this type of film made, the one that immediately comes to mind is of course Portrait of Jennie which had much better picture and sound quality and moved me emotionally far more than Peter Ibbetson. That said, the film has good points but I find the "grown-up" passion to be not as strong as I would have hoped, given the fusion and complicity between the kids during the first half hour. The separation of the children is an extremely painful moment to watch .. we then jump forward in time and when they meet up again and find out who they are and what they mean to each other, I just couldn't feel as much emotion as I would have liked. This may due to the actors involved .. I did not know the lady actress and have appreciated Gary Cooper in cowboy rôles but not in the role of an architect though I seem to remember having seen him in a similar rôle in a film called the Fountainhead. I also found that his person was well suited to the role of Mr Deeds but here something seemed to be missing, without my being able to put a finger on precisely what. Still the film has good moments with the dream meetings in paradisiac places and the end of course is satisfying. The music score is also very emotional and I hope that in the future both sound and picture quality can be cleaned up. I hope this film is not remade as any remake today is bound to overdo the special FX side and all the charm will be lost. The film is therefore quite original in its style and is bound to appeal to those who like a dose of surrealism and escapism without necessarily being completely removed from reality.
FERNANDO SILVA
Once again, like many other film's I've finally come to see, after reading so many about them and longing to have the opportunity of watching them (i.e. "Trouble in Paradise"), I was afraid this one was not going to meet my expectations, and I was wrong.First of all, Gary Cooper really impressed me so favorably; so early in his career he was able to handle such a difficult role and give a complex and sensitive performance, conveying Peter Ibbetson's ethereal aspects. Gary Cooper was really a fine actor (not only a charming personality and huge star), good at Drama, Adventure, Western, Romance, Comedy et al.Cooper portrays the idealistic Peter Ibbetson, a young man so deeply attached to his childhood memories, that he cannot feel fulfilled or happy, in spite that he's supposed to have everything a man would wish, to find happiness.Ann Harding, on the other hand, of whose performance regarding this film I've read that she wasn't ethereal enough to play this part (Peter Ibbetson's childhood sweetheart, Mary), I must say that I found her well suited to it, as always giving a sincere, sensitive, natural and restrained performance, looking perfect in period clothes.Both lead performers transmit truth into their characterizations, embodying the love that transcends all the obstacles or "L'amour fou" as French defined it, giving endearing performances. Beautiful Cinematography by the great Charles Lang and great sets by Hans Dreier.John Halliday plays expertly the stern Duke of Towers; Ida Lupino looks pretty and shows her great talent in a supporting role as a vulgar English woman Peter Ibbetson befriends in Paris and Douglass Drumbille is the "menacing at first sight", uncle of the Title character.Mention apart deserve lovely Virginia Weidler and Dickie Moore, who portray the leading stars as children, giving impressive, terrific performances. Their scenes together have been among the most heart-wrenching and sincere I've ever seen, featuring a couple of child actors (the 1949 film "The Secret Garden" featuring Dean Stockwell and Margaret O'Brien comes to my mind).If you liked such pictures as "Smilin' Through", "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir", "I'll Never Forget You", "Berkeley Square", "Somewhere in Time" or "Portrait of Jennie", you must see this one.The DVD transfer (released by Universal as part of the "Gary Cooper Collection") is of very good quality.
FilmSnobby
Well, it's finally here, all you rabid film enthusiasts. *Peter Ibbetson* -- never before released for home consumption, not even on VHS, and very rarely revived in art-houses since its 1935 flopped release -- is now on DVD as part of Universal's new "Gary Cooper Collection". On this five-movie set, *Ibbetson* is clearly the crown jewel, though the others are certainly worth a look, depending on your degree of interest (I've already reviewed on these pages Lubitsch's *Design for Living*, which should interest anybody interested in good movies). *Peter Ibbetson* is the very definition of the term "cult classic": its extreme rarity admits only a select club of in-the-know members, and its surrealist subject-matter -- sundered lovers who communicate to each other through their dreams -- especially as realized by such American workmen as director Henry Hathaway and actor Gary Cooper, makes this movie irresistible to the cinephile.It also appeals to other disparate types, such as the chick-flick connoisseur -- for what can be more deliriously romantic than lovers who live in their own telekinetic, dream-world universe? It's the kind of movie where Cooper builds Ann Harding a glistening castle in the air, made out of clouds and stardust, only to see it crumble when he doesn't believe strongly enough in his own dream. For those who will find all of this rather silly or at least doubtful, I can tell you that the unremitting sense of tragedy throughout the story's arc helps to keep things grounded and cleans out any extraneous gossamer. The entire movie depends upon the lovers' grievous separation, from childhood onward to old age, and Coop spends the majority of his adult life shackled in prison for a crime from which he should have been exonerated. Rather than commit suicide or allow himself to die after a savage beating from a jailer, he decides to go on living so that he can spend every night with his girlfriend, who is sharing the same dream with him. Romantic enough for you, ladies? Of course, the real points of the story are both the indomitable longevity of the libido and the endless resources contained within the human imagination -- fertile grounds for Surrealism. Not surprisingly, Luis Bunuel considered *Peter Ibbetson* to be one of the 10 greatest films ever made. The dreamy set-design, the gauzy photography by Charles Lang, and the beautiful score by Ernst Toch contribute to the generally bizarre feeling that the movie evokes. It's a rare American film, from any era, that insists on dreams having at least as much, if not more, significance than so-called "reality", but such is the case here in this mainstream release from 1935. The movie failed with mainstream audiences then, and probably wouldn't sit well with mainstream audiences today. Americans have always been practical people, even during the Great Depression: their need for escapism back then clearly didn't outweigh their reluctance to accept Coop as an English architect suffering the pangs of transcendent love that is stronger than the grave. (Their loss.) I suspect the same is true of audiences today, who, when they bother to watch old movies, certainly do not want to see one in which Gary Cooper wanders through a European-style art-movie directed by an action-adventure journeyman like Henry Hathaway. (Their loss.) 10 stars out of 10.
