If you’re expecting spaceships, claymation, and a super creepy sequence involving the devil, this is not that movie. Although, massive points to you if you got that reference. This The Adventures of Mark Twain was the result of movie studios wanting to make money off the lives of famous authors without actually researching the lives of famous authors. And thus, in 1944, we get Fredric March in a mustache.
First, I will warn that the scenes involving African American actors are cringe worthy. I hope they all got paid well for having to talk like Jim Crow stereotypes. I’m forgiving March himself as he would’ve had no say (being an actor, not a director) and he was a member of the NAACP which might be why he wanted to play Twain in the first place.
I’m not going to go into a lot of nitty -gritty or cast lists for this one. In over two hours of biopic, it was more like one of Twain’s books. The whole story is exaggerated right down to giving young Samuel Clemens (Twain) two childhood friends named Tom and Huck. Very little happens the correct order and several of his life’s major events are given a great deal of dramatic emphasis. The movie even starts with a rather ridiculous opening of people watching Halley’s comet like the world is coming to an end while Clemens is born. This might be one of the oldest Hollywood creation I’ve seen which includes the fictional characters appearing to the author in dream sequences.
Avoidance of hot political topics is also the name of the game. No mention of Twain deserting the Confederate Army or his work as an abolitionist. Twain fought for Black rights and women’s rights in reality yet there’s no mention of either. Mostly, it’s a lot of reminiscing about being a steamboat pilot. The creation of his publishing company and his printing of Ulysses Grant’s memoirs was an interesting scene, but only lasts ten minutes.
Still, there is a focus on his own self-doubt as a writer and how he used humor to help him in these moments of embarrassment or second guessing. In one scene, his future father-in-law states that writers are the great New England men like Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, and Wendell Holmes. He lets this get into his head, like many writers do. He then later meets three of these “giants” and tries to make joke which doesn’t land because to this shaken confidence. The movie credits his wife for keeping him going, but I’d like to think some of his own humor helped.
