ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

utgard14 Lackluster romantic drama with feminist elements. Basically it's Irene Dunne spouting off about wanting to have her own career and being involved in relationships with douchebags. All of the success she has career wise is ultimately attributed to a man and the film's message seems to be that a woman's happiness only comes from the love of a man, so I really don't see where feminists are supposed to find much to love about this film. The brief middle part of the film dealing with the brutal goings-on at a women's prison are most interesting. They should've made an entire film of that. The rest is forgettable. The cast is fine. No standouts. Edna May Oliver is wasted, which is just criminal.

kidboots When Merian C. Cooper replaced David O. Selznik as production head of RKO, he continued the habit of acquiring literary works for filming. "Ann Vickers" was one of Sinclair Lewis' most controversial books that covered such "hot topics" (for the time) as abortion, women's voting rights, sex and divorce, not to mention a realistic appraisal of life in a women's prison. It was written in 1933 and by the end of the year had been turned into a glossy woman's picture starring an intelligent actress who was making Martyrdom movies her own domain - Irene Dunne. This is a super movie - why don't they make movies like this anymore! Yes, it is a women's picture but not the sudsy "Mrs. Miniver" type that would become popular in the 1940s. Superlative Irene Dunne makes you believe in every scene she plays."She's going to make the world over - if it takes all winter" says Malvina (wonderful Edna May Oliver) of her friend Ann Vickers (Irene Dunne). Social worker Ann has a passion for helping people and when she meets disillusioned soldier (Bruce Cabot, playing a heel as usual) she spends a blissful week, with promises of marriage when he returns from the front. His letters become less frequent and when they accidentally meet at a restaurant, she realises that he has forgotten all about her. After her baby dies, she finds a job at a women's prison. Copperhead Gap Prison is grim,especially under Captain Waldo, a lecherous "Simon Legree" type, who yearns for the "good old days" of public floggings with the cat 'o nine tails and other nice amusements!!! Ann is appalled at the harsh treatment the women receive - she witnesses lashings, even hangings and when she is forced to leave writes a best seller that exposes the conditions of prison life. The publicity helps her secure a job as Governor at Styvessaunt Industrial Home. "I'm going to get you off the snow - cold turkey" (words I never thought I would hear Irene Dunne speak), "Show a little respect - I'm a A.M. and a Ph.D, - Well, I'm only a A.B.A. and a SOB" -the racy dialogue sprinkled through the film shows it was made in pre-code times - There's even a joke about going "cold turkey" later in the film.At a party she meets Judge Barney Dolphin - it is nice to see Walter Huston playing a pretty down to earth guy for once - yes, he is a Judge, but he is certainly not stern or forbidding. He is the man who, through his high praise, helped make her book a best seller and when they meet there is an instant attraction. Ann has found her soul mate - they are both intelligent and have high ideals. He is married - to a grasping woman, who prefers to live abroad and will not give him a divorce. they embark on a relationship and when he is sent to prison, by standing by him Ann loses her prestigious appointment. Trying to get friends to rally around her, she has a showdown with Lindsay Atwell (Conrad Nagel), an old admirer and a part that probably made more sense in the novel. Ann is reduced to writing articles about prison reform from her small upstairs flat and when Barney is released, finds Ann and their little boy waiting for him.With other stars, this film may have been maudlin - but the superior acting skills of Dunne and Huston make this an extremely fine movie. J. Carroll Naish has a "blink and you'll miss him" part as a drunken doctor, Gertrude Michael has a small scene as Barney's wife and if there is a prison matron in a movie, chances are it's Mary Foy.Highly, Highly Recommended.

BrentCarleton What can have been on Irene Dunne's mind when she accepted the role in this distasteful account of a woman of negotiable morals? Certainly, the Irene Dunne of the 1940's, whose reputation as a faithful Roman Catholic who publicly abhorred smut, and shunned any film scripts or Hollywood society, that might be even be remotely construed as corrupting public morals--would never have become associated with such a dubious project as this.Perhaps, New York's Cardinal Spellman, in his private audience with her, gave her a good dressing down over this role? That we will likely never know, inasmuch as she never spoke of it in later years, though she did denounce her morally suspect, (though quite successful) 1932 film, "Back Street" as "trash".Certainly by the time she received the distinguished St. Robert Bellarmine Award in 1965 for exemplary public Catholicism, "Ann Vickers" was no longer recalled by the general public.Suffice it to say that "Ann Vickers" works neither as entertainment or social commentary.Miss Dunne's role as an adulterous social worker, who sleeps around, (between reforming prisons and writing a best seller on correctional rehabilitation) doesn't dovetail with her temperament or on screen demeanor, and one keeps suspecting that the whole thing is a kind of tongue in cheek gag, (what else can we think when we witness a montage of Miss Dunne's sympathetic beatific gaze superimposed over a shot of a female prisoner being scourged?) By films end, she has renounced careerism in favor of marriage, (to crusty convict Walter Huston no less--and what kind of lunacy would ever conceive of pairing these two romantically?) Irene Dunne completists will no doubt wish to see this curiosity, if only for the chance to hear her promise to rehabilitate a cocaine addict under her charge: "I'm going to get you off the snow cold turkey" !!! Well, if nothing else such sordid goings on, do present her light years from her usual milieu of operatic trills, furbellowed chiffon and strawberry phosphates--cocaine addiction not being the first subject one associates with the irreproachable Miss Dunne.

jlanders13 "Ann Vickers" is an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' book about an unwed social worker who becomes pregnant during World War I and is subsequently abandoned by her lover. It is a valuable social commentary on the mores and folkways of the time (1933) and explores the double standard then existent that condemned a woman for `loose living' while exonerating a man. The most interesting aspect of the film to me was the fact that it was almost a mirror's image of the sea change that took place in morals during 1920's in the aftermath of World War I.RKO couldn't have picked a better actress to play the part of Ann Vickers. Irene Dunne was young, sensitive, brave, intelligent – everything the `modern woman' of the day was supposed to be. Her early professional career was marked by a series of skillfully done tearjerkers of which "Ann Vickers" is one of the better ones.I highly recommend this movie. Walter Huston did a fine job as Ann's second love, and the man who restored her faith in a loving relationship. It's well directed and filmed and is a wonderful insight into life in the U.S. from just after World War I up until the middle of the Great Depression.