Idiot's Delight (1939) User Reviews (51)

Shearer and Gable ham it up to this idiot's delight

[SimonJack · 8/10 · 17 January 2015]

The stage play by this same title was apparently a Broadway hit in 1936. It had 300 performances from March 24 to December of that year. Robert Sherwood wrote the play as well as the screenplay for this movie. But, I wonder if "Idiot's Delight" on stage was the same quirky production as it is on film. I suspect that on stage it was more of an anti-war political satire with just a touch of comedy and music. After all, the play received a Pulitzer Prize in 1936 for drama. But with more background in the beginning for the movie – provided by the same writer, and the treatment given it by Clark Gable and Norma Shearer, I think that the film is quite different.

The selection of characters from different countries – those likely to be major combatants in the war that was brewing, is intentional by the writer, which makes it clearly a satire of the time. Gable's Harry Van and his troupe of American girls parody America at the mid-1930s. They're not involved and the conflict shouldn't include them. Charles Coburn plays the German doctor, Hugo Waldersee, who lives for humanitarian research; but when his country is on one side of the conflict, he tosses the wellbeing of mankind aside in a blind loyalty to his country. That's a good parody of the German scientific community in general. The English couple, Jimmy and Mrs. Cherry, parody the British in sacrificing a honeymoon for duty to country. Burgess Meredith's character, Quillary, parodies France in that Paris continued its lifestyle of gaiety and didn't consider the threat of war at all serious. I'm not sure how Joseph Schildkraut's Capt. Kirvline parodies Italy.

The elements of a moral message about the looming war are there. And, when combat begins it lends to the seriousness of the plot and message. But wait a minute. We have fake Russian, Norma Shearer, playing Countess Irena. Her English-Russian accent is hilarious. I don't think there's ever been another movie made in which all the actors together rolled as many "R"s as Shearer does here in her dialog. She's great at it, and a veritable ham. That, along with her avowed changes in so many different stories of her escape from the Soviets, really puts this over as mainstream comedy. No doubt, Shearer and Gable turned up the ham quite a bit to overcome some horrible weaknesses of the film. The movie suffers overall from poor production qualities. The cinematography and direction are not very good. What special effects there are, are very weak and amateurish.

Then we're made to believe that there is a huge military airbase in the Alps. Where would they have sufficient flat ground and a huge valley to allow the aircraft to clear the peaks? The scenes we see of aircraft are amateurish. It was hard to believe that this was an MGM movie. Here's a studio that made lavish productions with grand sets, and all they could come up with for this film were cartoons and kindergarten drawings of toy aircraft. The people in the Hotel Monte Gabrielle look down – way down below, from their terrace and see the airfield that seems so tiny with rows and rows of planes streaming out of some sort of massive aerodrome. We're looking at dozens of little toy airplanes moving on a flat white surface surrounded by towering peaks. What a technical fiasco. And I can't believe MGM would be intentionally amateurish for the sake of comedy.

Others have described the give and take between Harry Van and Countess Irena. Harry remembers her as just plain Irene who performed in an acrobatic group 10 years before in Omaha. Between stories about her childhood in Russia and escapades of escaping the Soviets, Irena babbles some philosophical lines. But, these seem mostly gibberish, given her character and the rest of the dialog. Now the part of Harry and his troupe, "Les Blondes.," is straight song and dance – with humor. So, this is the entertainment that makes the movie a musical (along with some earlier snippets of Harry doing other song and dance routines).

I can see where this part of the play on stage would fit the message of a dramatic play. And, the Frenchman, Burgess Meredith's character, Quillary, calls this to everyone's attention. "How can we sit around and enjoy entertainment with all the atrocities going on around us and with the world headed for self-destruction?" But in the movie, Quillary comes across as more of a fanatical ideologue himself. What could a few stranded travelers do? And, we are enjoying the very good song and dance entertainment as a part of the story. Thus, we see the hammy performances of Shearer and Gable (his are often in his amusing and long quizzical looks at Shearer, that the camera focuses on for some time), as truly intended for comedy and entertainment. Oh, yes – there is also a touch of romance in the film.

Others have commented on Gable's song and dance. I agree that he is very good in all of the snippets in this move. His performance of "Puttin' on the Ritz," is so good it can be reason in itself to make this movie a part of one's film library. Overall, the movie has some historical value for its weak satire of the period and powers just before WWII. It has very good saving value in comedy, especially of Norma Shearer. And the vaudeville scenes of the various acts that Gable gets in are enjoyable. Top that off with Gable's "Puttin on the Ritz," and "Idiot's Delight" should entertain most viewers, regardless of who the idiots are.

artifacts

[auntielynn · 7/10 · 5 July 2009]

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.

Last Teaming with Gable and Shearer

[smithy-8 · 8/10 · 25 October 2003]

"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.

Yet Another Gem from 1939!!!!!!!

[EightyProof45 · 14 January 2004]

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.

An Interesting Comedy That Is A Mixed Bag

[atlasmb · 7/10 · 25 November 2015]

When watching "Idiot's Delight", one needs to remember that it was released in 1939, the year WWII began in Europe and before the U.S. entered the conflict. Audiences did not know how long the war would last or that the U.S. would send its troops or that millions would die including so many civilians targeted by Hitler.

The film is adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which involves a variety of characters who are forced to wait in a Swiss hotel at the beginning of hostilities until the authorities allow them to cross the borders. The play did not include the portion of the film that precedes the hotel scenes.

With the earlier scenes, which include the relationship between Harry Van (Clark Gable) and Irene Fellara (Norma Shearer), the film lacks the central mystery of the play--is the Russian aristocrat Harry meets in the hotel the same woman (Irene) he met in Omaha, as he believes?

The other hotel guests include a pacifist activist, a German munitions manufacturer, and a honeymooning British couple. The proclamation of war has certain impacts on all their lives. But still, the future is very uncertain. The author "warns" the audience, through dialogue, that history has taught us war should never be trivialized by predictions of a quick resolution.

Despite the dark prospect of impending war, the film is a light-hearted comedy until the ending. The domestic film has a very different ending than the international release. TCM shows both endings, for contrast. The domestic ending seems appropriate, given the date of its release. The international ending seems almost prescient from today's point of view, but to a viewer in 1939, it would feel appropriately solemn.

Shearer's performance needs to be recognized as a parody of Garbo to be appreciated. She must have had fun with the accent and affectation.

The strength or weakness of the ending, including the lack of drama involved in the verification of the Russian woman's identity, might be points of discussion, but I think it could have been stronger.

Odd film about the start of World War II in Europe

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 30 December 2007]

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.

Interesting relic of it's age

[theowinthrop · 7/10 · 10 October 2005]

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.

Right message, wrong war

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 29 November 2015]

This film was released in January 1939, based on a play, eight months before Hitler's Germany would start WWII by invading Poland. From the mid 1920's up to the mid 1930's Hollywood had been making anti war films based on the fact that WWI took so many lives and, in the end, really seemed to be pointless. This was probably the last of that bunch.

So the backdrop to this film is some unnamed country bordering Switzerland, which has always been neutral not because it chooses to be, but because nobody wants to scale all of those mountains and then face a nation in which every household is required to have a gun and the inhabitants are required to know how to use it.

War is about to be declared and so you have a group of unrelated and dissimilar travelers all temporarily trapped at a swanky mountain hotel until their passports can be verified and they can get across the border the following day. Obviously the author's viewpoint for the reason for this war is that of pacifist Quillary (Burgess Meredith), who simply believes he can go out and convince men to stop killing each other, and that whatever people think they are fighting about is just a ruse cooked up by those who profit from the selling of war machines. How quaint. I think Hitler would have remained unconvinced by Quillary's argument up to the point he put a bullet through his brain. Early in the movie the local soldiers arrest him for his speech, or perhaps because they found him as tiresome as I did.

As for the rest of the travelers, there is an owner of munitions plants played by Edward Arnold, his female companion played by Norma Shearer, a perpetually failed vaudeville entertainer (Clark Gable) who has finally got a niche with a half a dozen blonde singers and dancers, and a honeymooning British couple. There is also a soldier (Joseph Schildkraut), who is dressed similarly to a Nazi, but doesn't have that "Nazi way" about him that you see in actual WWII films. Instead he seems somewhat like a bored but polite bureaucrat, just doing his job. He is definitely not Conrad Veidt's interpretation of that kind of role just a couple of years later.

What makes this film worth watching, given that the film is so off base as to what WWII was about? Earlier in the film we see Gable's character and Shearer's character meeting in vaudeville in Nebraska and, as much as the production code would allow, implying they spent a single night together, and then never saw each other again. Until now. Maybe. You see, the munitions magnate's female companion is the spitting image of the girl Gable's character knew back in America ten years before. But this woman says she is a Russian aristocrat, run out of her homeland by the Bolsheviks as a child. She walks around in ridiculous looking fashions that would have made Dietrich gawk and a silly looking blonde wig. She claims to never have known Gable.

It's fun to see Gable give Shearer that same "I've got your number sister" look he gave Harlow, Leigh, and Crawford. And you've got to wonder if Shearer's obviously deliberate over the top performance was inspired by exaggerating Greta Garbo's past performances, and if Garbo punched her in the nose after seeing this obvious parroting of her method. But that would be so un-Garbo. Oh well, if Gable can sing and dance in this film, then I guess Garbo could punch someone in the nose. Enjoy, it is a delight and I'm no idiot.

A message for today

[cekadah · 10/10 · 7 July 2018]

This story is mostly about a world on the edge and ready to be cracked open by war. But few of the characters care. Let's have fun! Listen to their dialogue because it is as relevant today as it was in 1939.

Achille Weber (Edward Arnold) is ready to capitalize on the approaching destruction. The character played by Burgess Meredith is warning all on what is about to happen. I'll leave it there because I hope this movie is watched more.

On the lighter side, the whole movie is worth watching just for Norma Shearer as Irene!

A Can of Mixed Nuts

[dglink · 6/10 · 24 October 2010]

Clarence Brown's "Idiot's Delight," based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood, is like a can of mixed nuts: a few classy cashews, the rare Brazil nut, and lots of boring peanuts. On the verge of World War II, a motley crew of travelers is stranded at an Alpine hotel in an unnamed country. However, the film is no "Grand Hotel," more a "Chalet of Fools." The highlight is Clark Gable's famous or infamous song-and-dance routine, "Putting on the Ritz," with a bevy of blonde showgirls. Gable's endearingly clumsy dancing is classic and probably best seen as an excerpt in "That's Entertainment." To the amusement of Gable and the audience, Norma Shearer in a blonde wig and a deliberately thick Russian accent camps shamelessly. Obviously enjoying herself, Shearer steals the scenes as a phony playing a phony when Gable is not hoofing.

However, the fun stops there. Burgess Meredith brings the film to a halt every time he appears to rant anti-war propaganda at the other guests. Charles Coburn muddles around with cages of rats and talks about curing cancer, and a pair of innocent newly weds do nothing but occupy screen time. The blonde showgirls that accompany Gable are standard stereotypes from the Southern belle to the perky pixie, and Joseph Schildkraut is the handsome but stern stereotypical military officer. The girls cavort with the soldiers; the young husband must return to defend his country; the bad guys drop bombs. Too many stale peanuts.

After the clichés have played out, the film takes a dark turn that dampens, no, actually drowns, any fun that preceded it, and the finale is absolutely ludicrous. About half way into "Idiot's Delight," Sherwood strives to add "meaning" and "significance" to his work and forgot "entertainment." A stellar cast and a few good scenes are generally wasted in a film whose best bits appear in "That's Entertainment."

Watch "A Free Soul" instead.

[crombina · 4/10 · 21 December 2007]

I'm a fan of Clark Gable and Norma Shearer who was disappointed with their performances in "Idiot's Delight."

Their scenes together toward the beginning of the movie were cute, but once Shearer became the Russian countess, I lost interest in watching it. However, I did stick it out until the end hoping that it would get better and also because the story progressively got more bizarre.

Oddly enough, the ending kind of reminded me of "Fight Club" since both films have the main characters in a high-rise building in the midst of chaos and destruction. Speaking of the ending, I preferred the international one because it made a tiny bit more sense than the domestic version.

If you want to see a great Gable - Shearer pairing, watch "A Free Soul." It's a far better film than "Idiot's Delight."

Perfection, Rhythm, Music, Message!

[sbackhus · 10/10 · 6 January 2019]

Idiot's Delight is one of the great films of all time! It combines superb acting, brilliant musical choices, searing dialog, wonderful editing, and spectacular sets and settings. I have watched this film many times, and can't wait for it's release on DVD(It HAS been released at this update)! There is a rhythm about it, from the opening musical strains, to the final moment of triumph of life and love over war and hatred, that is absolutely compelling. Kudos to director Clarence Brown for his superior touch, and, of course, to Norma Shearer and Clark Gable for their bravura portrayals of two lost souls, who find each other in the mounting chaos that becomes World War II, as they watch. The powerful supporting cast further contributes to the strength of the underlying drama, as adapted from Robert Sherwood's impressive play (by him!) to the screen. Charles Coburn as the non-committal German scientist, Burgess Meredith as the starry-eyed radical, Joseph Shieldkraut as the dispassionate soldier, and the chilling portrayal by Edward Arnold, as a hardened, heartless, industrialist, make virtually every scene a must-watch event. And who could forget Virginia Mayo and "Les Blondes"! The film depicts, with stunning accuracy, the beginning of World War II, nine months BEFORE it actually happened!!! - a towering intellectual feat (and of particular significance to this writer, as I was born in the middle of the historical time-frame of this film). Coupled with astonishing dialog, in passages by Burgess Meredith's idealist, Norma Shearer's femme fatale, Edward Arnold's heartless arms magnate, and Clark Gable's hopelessly naïve American, the impact of the ideas of Idiot's Delight wash over the viewer in a cascade of fantasy become reality. After this parade of thought and action has marched across the screen relentlessly for more than 100 minutes, the final scenes (in the "American" ending) between Gable and Shearer give us all hope that the world will become right again, if we just understand that God really IS there to lead us forward.

Idiot's Delight stands as a crowning achievement of film-making art - visually, intellectually, and emotionally. It satisfies the thirst of human-kind for answers to the age-old question of who is in charge, and points the way for us, as mere humans, to seek the answer from Him who made us & guides us.

Rewritten(from 2009) by Stephen E. Backhus, this 6th day of January, 2019.

well worth seeing because it's so ODD!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 15 July 2005]

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.

A Mediocre But Intriguing Film Version of the Celebrated Play

[gftbiloxi · 5/10 · 19 April 2005]

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

An idiotic stinkbomb with two gems inside...

[bowkie · 28 June 2003]

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.

An imperfect but charming pre-war gem

[MissSimonetta · 7/10 · 7 February 2023]

I can see why IDIOT'S DELIGHT isn't highly regarded. Its political message is on-the-nose and the 1920s prologue sequence feels rather unnecessary, an excuse to "open up" theatrical material to little dramatic purpose. However, I cannot call this film a failure by any means, for there are treasures to be found within those 147 minutes.

Firstly, we get to see Clark Gable sing and dance, which would be interesting if only for the novelty of it, but these scenes are very charming and Gable acquits himself well. Secondly, Norma Shearer shines in a comedic imitation of Garbo. She gets crap for being "too affected" in other roles, but here the affectations are perfect because she's playing a con-woman who seems to love the sound of her own phony accent. The two have great chemistry and to be honest, I think their teaming here is far more interesting than in STRANGE INTERLUDE.

Far from great, but it could have been a contender...

[gregory-81 · 6/10 · 9 January 2006]

I was fascinated with this movie and kept thinking that it could have been truly wonderful. I thought that it had some of the worst 'special' effects that I have ever seen even from that era. The air raid sequences with all those bombers running one after another straight into the same mountain were far less realistic than the flying monkeys from same year's Wizard of Oz. If they had simply toned down the rhetoric, played up the obvious farce and added just a touch of brutal reality they would have had 'Casablanca' in 1939.

I think that the cast was great. Norma Shearer was SUPPOSED to be over the top and Gable was SUPPOSED to be a lousy hoofer. With a lighter touch this could have been poignant and great.

Too bad the crew spent too much time reading minds instead of Fortune telling.

OTT Blonde Norma Shearer + Anti-War Sentiments

[cdale-41392 · 7/10 · 7 February 2019]

This is a pretty odd film; odd, but enjoyable.

Harry Van (Clark Gable) returns from WW1 and looks for a break into show business. He goes through a series of crappy gigs until he starts making a name for himself with the blindfolded "mind-reader" Madame Zuleika. He's the straight man who communicates to her in code, so she'll guess the objects he's gathered from the audience.

It's during this gig that he meets Irene (Norma Shearer), an acrobat with the Fellara Acrobat Troupe that follows Madame Zuleika's set. She has a vivid imagination, tells enormous lies about her alleged Russian background, and pursues Harry in a creepy way. They have a brief fling then part ways in Omaha.

Fast forward twenty years and "Harry Van and Les Blondes" are touring Europe as another war is brewing. Harry and the ladies are heading to Geneva Switzerland but get stuck at the border and are forced to take accommodations at a ski resort. Guess who else shows up? This time she's a blonde and travels with her wealthy business associate - an arms dealer. Harry recognizes Irene, but she pretends that she doesn't recognize him ... until things gets real with the war.

Norma Shearer looks very strange as a blonde, and she plays Irene so over-the-top that she's almost a caricature. And speaking of OTT, there are some seriously OTT moments story-wise towards the end of the film.

On another note, it was nice to see some anti-war sentiments in an era often defined by extreme patriotism at all costs.

Recommended!

Was It Omaha Where We Met?

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 3 July 2009]

By the time Idiot's Delight came to the big screen, the rumors of war were more than rumor as they were in 1936 when the play ran 300 performances on Broadway. The fear of war as a concept, valid as it was after World War I, had given way to real dictators with military machines on the left and right of the spectrum who were on the move. Knowing that, I wonder what audiences thought of in 1939 when they saw this film.

On stage it starred the legendary team of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne as the two bit vaudeville hoofer and the woman he thinks he might have known from way back when. So Clark Gable and Norma Shearer had quite a bit to measure up to on screen. I'm betting that Lunt and Fontanne played it much differently.

For one thing the entire stage play is set in that hotel lobby in the Italian Alps, so when Lunt is busy trying to remember just where he knows Fontanne from, the audience doesn't know. For the screen, author Robert Sherwood to take the work out of a one scene environment wrote that whole beginning where we see Gable's less than brilliant career and his meeting with Shearer in Omaha which really stuck in his mind over the years.

The screen version is about the encounter between two people that left an indelible impression on at least one of them with the rest of the cast in support. On stage the characters played by the Lunts are part of an ensemble, two people with a past caught up in the beginning of a war where the sides aren't quite made clear. That really isn't important, the idea is war is a bad thing.

On stage the work was timely. There was a notion around that World War I was started by the folks who were arms makers, a notion popularized by the US Senate and a North Dakota Republican isolationist Senator named Gerald P. Nye. By 1939 fewer and fewer were buying into Nye's ideas. The play and film if it has a villain it's that of the munitions manufacturer who Edward Arnold plays. He's a villain for starting the war he and his kind. It's in his company that Gable sees Shearer and he keeps wondering where you and I have met before.

Idiot's Delight was the last of three films that Gable and Shearer did together. The first one is the best, A Free Soul, in fact it's the film that got Clark Gable his big break as a star. Idiot's Delight even tailored for Gable and Shearer and movie audiences isn't as good as that first pairing. Still it's a milestone film with a watered down message.

Is Norma Shearer a fake, or the real thing?

[Pat-54 · 10/10 · 22 September 1998]

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."

Hard To Take

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 22 December 2012]

This is one of those films that start off on a high note and then begin to dip, and ultimately just get worse and worse, and more talky and talky as the play progresses. The first quarter-hour is marvelously entertaining. Presumably, this was written for the movie, not for the stage. The play employs only the one set. All the action is laid in the lobby/lounge area of a Swiss Hotel, futuristically on the eve of World War II. The play opened on Broadway on 24 March 1936. As I say, it's intriguingly futuristic, as the movie was also meant to be, but by the time "Idiot's Delight" went into general release, WW2 had already broken out. This takes the point off much of the plot and dialogue. Director Clarence Brown and photographer William Daniels do their best to brighten the "message", but my advice is to switch the movie off after Gable sings "By the Light of the Silvery Moon".

That's entertainment?

[mgmax · 4/10 · 8 November 1999]

Sometimes you just have to wonder at what earlier generations enjoyed as entertainment-- let alone gave Pulitzers to. This was, I guess, a sort of musical comedy about imminent war in Europe, and maybe played for comedy by Lunt and Fontanne it worked on stage. But 60 years later it comes off like Springtime for Hitler-- a bizarre melange of elements that don't remotely belong together. These range from Gable's hoofer (a nice relaxed performance) and his troupe of dancing bimbos, to Shearer's supposed Rooooooshian Coooooowntesssss who schusses her arms to heaven, lets her ironed blonde 'do slink down her $20,000 gown, and declaims at 130 decibels every time she has something to say... to Meredith (in the movie's most unbearable role) as a preachy pacifist who you're only too glad to see hauled off and shot. The fault with the film, I believe, lies with Shearer; I guess the part was supposed to be a sort of Garbo parody, but she's so entombed in MGM glamor that she misses the comedy, rendering it merely a Garbo travesty, which is not exactly the same thing. Try to catch this on TCM, where they'll show you the different American and European endings-- the inanity of the American version only being capped by a final scene in which bombs are the mere background music for love-- or, as Shearer would have said it, the meeeeeere backgrouwwwwwnd myooooooozic for lowwwwwwwve!

I love this one

[aeidontou · 10/10 · 13 September 2018]

Such a fun sweet movie, achieves sentiment with intelligence. Rare combination, rare movie.

The only woman Clark Gable has no chemistry with

[stills-6 · 7/10 · 27 May 2002]

This is one of those odd little movies that really tries to be something special, but misses. Gable seems to be trying very hard to talk really fast in order to get through with his lines and out of the frame with Norma Shearer, with whom he has negative chemistry. Shearer's audacious princess is amusing, but gets old really fast, and really to little effect except as an amusement. Although she does all right with the character, Shearer seems miscast as a Russian beauty. I've read that Lana Turner was supposed to play in this role, but dropped out due to an "illness." That's a shame, because I'm sure her chemistry with Gable would have been more electric.

This movie funny at times, but the naive direction and choppy editing make it difficult to watch. Gable is fun, but he's not enough to justify the movie.

As Groucho sang: Whatever it is, I'm again' it.

[1930s_Time_Machine · 4/10 · 15 January 2024]

Mildly entertaining but this is more interesting as a reflection on what people at the time thought this forthcoming war was all about. The original play was written a few years earlier when, apart from those who had read 'My Struggle' by a disgruntled Austrian, nobody was quite sure what was happening.

By 1939 one might have expected that Hollywood had gotten out of its habit of filming plays but alas no. Visually this is clearly a film not a play, indeed a big budget MGM film (even though the animated aircraft are astonishingly awful and amateurish - very un-MGM) but the trouble is when you get a famous playwright to adapt his own play to a moving picture, he is of course going to want to retain as much of his own script as he can. This therefore is essentially his play, his words just with some nice images.

It's a good old-fashioned message film but what makes this message a little weak is that when the play was written and even as war broke out, why it was happening wasn't clear. The naïve message was: Nobody wants a war (except, as this film points out, the arms manufacturers) so let's just not have one! It was only just over twenty years since the first one ended and even in the 1930s nobody could quite agree on what that was all about so it was assumed that this too was just some silly greedy squabble or ego trip. Nevertheless, the film tries (but ultimately fails) to show the nonsense of war by showing hotel guests from different countries all getting on who at the drop of a hat will then be hating and wanting to kill each other. Even though France didn't even believe the war would happen, René Claire's equally big budget film of the same year, LA RÈGLE DU JEU gets its same message over better and - if we're supposed to accept that these films are apparently comedies, is a little funnier.

Entertainment wise, it's certainly not boring but it does seem to go on for a long time and can get a bit repetitive and preachy at times. Clarke Gable plays Clarke Gable although watching him do the song and dance routines is like watching one of those TV shows like Strictly Come Dancing (Dancing with the Stars in America) where a celebrity has to do something completely out of his comfort zone - dancing! Like most of the hotel guests, Norma Shearer's character is a fake - in this case a fake Russian Duchess. She chose to do this character as an over the top, overly dramatic Greta Garbo with a ridiculous accent a lá Meerkat. If you don't realise that this is a comedy character she's doing, you might simply think that she can't act but I can understand some people thinking this because her comedy character just isn't funny. Maybe at the time when the Shearer-Garbo rivalry was something on people's minds it might have been amusing but now it's just a bit irritating.

So despite the non-funny funny character, the worst wig ever worn in a motion picture, the unfocussed message and some dreadful special effects, it is worth watching. Direction is a bit slow at times but it is very well acted and the characters particularly those of Gable and Shearer are extremely written, deep, complex and real.