| Winterset | |
|---|---|
&sq=&lang=&file=File:Winterset_(film).jpg) DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Alfred Santell |
| Screenplay by | Anthony Veiller |
| Based on | Winterset by Maxwell Anderson |
| Produced by | Pandro S. Berman |
| Starring | Burgess Meredith Margo Eduardo Ciannelli John Carradine Edward Ellis |
| Cinematography | J. Peverell Marley |
| Edited by | William Hamilton |
| Music by | Nathaniel Shilkret (uncredited) |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 77 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $407,000[2] |
| Box office | $682,000[2] |
Winterset is a 1936 American crime film directed by Alfred Santell, based on the 1935 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson, in a loose dramatization of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and execution in 1928. The script retains elements of the blank verse poetic meter on which Anderson based his 1935 Winterset Broadway theater production.[3]
Actor Burgess Meredith made his credited film debut as the avenging son Mio Romagna.[4]
The film greatly changes the ending of the play, in which the lovers Mio and Miriamne are shot to death by gangsters. In the film, the two are cornered, but Mio deliberately causes a commotion by loudly playing a nearby abandoned hurdy-gurdy and deliberately causing himself and Miriamne to be arrested, thus placing them out of reach from the gangsters. The film made a loss of $2,000.[2]
- ^ "Winterset: Detail View". American Film Institute. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
- ^ a b c Richard Jewel, 'RKO Film Grosses: 1931-1951', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 14 No 1, 1994 p56
- ^ Ross, 2004: “...blank verse gangster story (loosely based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case)...liberated from much of the poetic dialogue by screenwriter Anthony Veillier...”
- ^ Ross, 2004: "Meridith would never become the [box office success the critics] predicted in reviews of Winterset."