WINTERSET (1936) Burgess Meredith, Margo & Eduardo Ciannelli | Crime, Drama | B&W

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.

SYNOPSIS
Immigrant radical Bartolomeo Romagna is falsely condemned and executed for a payroll robbery. Years later, his son Mio sets out to find the truth of the crime and to bring to account the gangster Trock Estrella.

CAST & CREW
Burgess Meredith as Mio Romagna
Margo as Miriamne Esdras
Eduardo Ciannelli as Trock Estrella
Maurice Moscovitch as Esdras
Paul Guilfoyle as Garth Esdras
Edward Ellis as Judge Gaunt
Stanley Ridges as Shadow
Mischa Auer as A radical
Willard Robertson as Policeman
Alec Craig as Oak
John Carradine as Bartolomeo Romagna
Myron McCormick as Carr
Helen Jerome Eddy as Maria Romagna
Barbara Pepper as A girl
Fernanda Eliscu as Piny

Directed by Alfred Santell
Screenplay by Anthony Veiller
Based on Winterset by Maxwell Anderson
Produced by Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography J. Peverell Marley
Edited by William Hamilton
Music by Nathaniel Shilkret
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures
Release date November 20, 1936
Running time 77 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $407,000
Box office $682,000

NOTES
Actor Burgess Meredith made his credited film debut as the avenging son Rio Romagna.

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.

Writing for The Spectator in 1937, Graham Greene gave the film a good review, noting that "this play (in the original it was in blank verse) has [...] solid merits". Despite its genre, Greene commented that "there are situations [...] which have more intensity than mere 'thriller' stuff". He praised the "evil magnificence" of Ciannelli's acting as Trock, pointing out that "here, as in all good plays, it is in the acts themselves, as much as in the dialogue, that the poetic idea is expressed."

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Art Direction by Perry Ferguson and the other for Original Score by Nathaniel Shilkret.