An American Tragedy Indeed

By Margaret Hicks in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 7, 2006 3:35PM

We were surprised to see that Woody Allen’s film “Matchpoint” didn’t win for best original screenplay. Oh wait, no we weren’t, because much of Allen’s film was taken from one of the greatest Chicago books of all time, “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser. Even Dreiser based his novel on the true story of Chester Gillette and Grace Brown.

In “Matchpoint”, a struggling tennis player who never really made it, claws his way up the social ladder by meeting a rich man and falling in love with his sister. Ding dang ding, something bad happens, murders are covered up and ScaJo’s lips protrude sexily while she threatens him and he makes the “ultimate” mistake.

In “An American Tragedy”, a young man, Clyde Griffiths, who never really made it, claws his way up the ladder, meets a rich man that helps him, meets a woman, something bad happens and everything is similar with the exception of ScaJo’s lips.

We don’t want to completely ruin the story by telling you everything (the butler did it!), but trust us, please trust us, when we say go out now and get a copy of “An American Tragedy” and get the story the way it was meant to be gotten. When we read it, we were completely spell-bound; spasmodically looking around on the El wishing someone else was reading this book so we could talk about it. We loved the craziness of 1920’s Chicago, the class system in the city, and the ugliness of American denial in attempting to get what we think we deserve. Clyde Griffiths remains one of the most frustrating, endearing and annoying characters in literary history.

If the book is just too much, check out the movie “A Place in the Sun” with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, we think they’re prettier than their “Matchpoint” counterparts.