My chief problem with the picture is not that I think Cooper is woefully miscast, as do most of the movie's detractors. It's a most unusual role for Coop certainly, but, in my opinion, he makes quite a fair fist of it. I also liked Ida Lupino, but I felt the normally ultra-reliable Donald Meek made but a poor impression with his role-admittedly small, but important. On the other hand, Douglass Dumbrille is given an elaborate introduction as the colonel, but then completely disappears! As for the children - Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler - they are both absolute horrors, though Master Moore is far the more obnoxious of the two.Admittedly, I hardly expected du Maurier's Mimsey to be accurately (or even half-heartedly) translated to film. But even so, Miss Weidler is surely the very opposite of the child du Maurier describes: "the reverse of beautiful, although she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and tennity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb perpetually, and kept her own counsel." Fortunately, both Ann Harding and John Halliday are cast more in the du Maurier mold, and - what's more important - both display excellent presence and ability.The chief problem for me really comes down to Hathaway. He seemed to me to be a bit out of his element here. Three of the players were so embarrassingly bad, it's almost beyond belief that a skillful director could allow such ineptitude to slip by. Especially with such key support players. Admittedly, two were children, but Hathaway himself was a child actor. You could understand a bit-player or a minor actor gumming up a scene. He's on the set for a few days at most - and then gone forever. But actors that a director is supposed to be guiding, day in, day out, for weeks on end! Hathaway has stated, on more than one occasion, that actors are hired to act. It is not the director's job, he feels, to guide them with their interpretations, let alone help and succor actors who have been miscast or are out of their depth. On the other hand, Hathaway would know from his own personal experiences the particular requirements of child actors and one would expect him to rise to the challenge. But this was obviously not the case here.If Hathaway is not the man for the players, he is also not the man for this type of story. He's an action man, not a Lubitsch who can handle fantasy and Romance. That's "Romance" with a capital "R", not sex, or even just your everyday celluloid boy-meets-girl. The two or three action scenes and the tense confrontation at the dinner-table (masterfully shot from six or eight angles, and skilfully edited by Stuart Heisler) do come across with powerful effectiveness. But elsewhere, Hathaway is obviously laboring with difficulty with unfamiliar surroundings and trappings. The fantasy material lacks tight supervision. Its effects are too obvious, too heavy-handed.I can understand why many French critics love this movie. Sub-titles would not only disguise the inadequacies of Moore's and Weidler's performances, but allow freedom to interpret the visuals more imaginatively and romantically. In a foreign language, - and for those of us with more sensitive dispositions, - "Peter Ibbetson" would likely emerge as a profoundly moving experience.

There is no way I would have ever heard about this film without seeing it listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I was definitely more interested when it was supplied by the BFI (British Film Institute), based on the novel by George du Maurier, grandfather of Daphne du Maurier, directed by Henry Hathaway (Niagara, True Grit). Basically young English boy Gogo (Dickie Moore) is growing up in Paris, and he is very friendly with neighbour girl Mimsey (Virginia Weidler). After the death of his mother, Gogo is taken to England by his uncle, who gives him the new name, based on his mother's maiden name, he becomes Peter Ibbetson. Now an adult Englishman, Peter Ibbetson (Gary Cooper) works as an architect in Yorkshire, his latest project is being hired by the Duke of Towers (John Halliday) to design and bring restoration to a building for him. Peter is introduced to Mary, Duchess of Towers (Ann Harding), he falls in love with her, and although she is already married, she develops feelings for him as well. The Duke discovers their love affair and demands they explain themselves, in doing this Peter realises that Mary is in fact Mimsey, his childhood sweetheart, and she realises he is Gogo. The Duke becomes jealous and pulls out a gun to shoot Peter, in the scuffle Peter gets the gun, and the kills the Duke in self-defence. Peter is unjustly convicted and sentenced to life in prison for this accidental killing, he despairs that he will never see Mary again, however they are reunited in their dreams. The years pass, but Peter and Mary remain youthful in their dreams, in the end Mary dies from old age, but she goes to her dream world one last time, there she is joined by Peter as they go to Heaven together. Also starring Ida Lupino as Agnes, Douglass Dumbrille as Colonel Forsythe, Doris Lloyd as Mrs. Dorian, Elsa Buchanan as Madame Pasquier, Christian Rub as Major Duquesnois, Donald Meek as Mr. Slade and Gilbert Emery as Wilkins. The casting of Cooper and Harding is perhaps a little odd, but that's partly good, it is a slightly strange film anyway, lovers who communicate mostly through dreams, though it is an oddity it became something of a landmark, I don't think it's the sort of thing I'd watch more than once, a reasonable classic drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Music for Irvin Talbot and Ernst Toch. Good!

I've never been a big fan of Cooper, but he's adequate here as an architect who is obsessed with his long lost female best friend from childhood. I actually thought the first section of the film, which takes place during childhood with the characters played by Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler, was the strongest. It's always surprising to come along a competent child actor in Golden Age cinema, so it was nice to have two of them here. The second section of the film has Cooper meeting the girl again, this time played by the beautiful Ann Harding. Unfortunately, she's married to a Duke. The third chapter I won't ruin, but I have to say I wasn't too happy with the fantastical premise of the two characters sharing each other's dreams. It seemed too out there for what is otherwise a realistic film. Still, you'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by it all. Henry Hathaway's direction is fine, and the cinematography is often exquisite. The score, which is the only aspect of the film that received an Oscar nomination, is particularly beautiful. Ida Lupino gives a short but great supporting performance as an Englishwoman Cooper meets on his holiday in Paris.

This 1933 Gary Cooper film is highly regarded and mentioned in many film books. It was a serious film in tone and content, and also in it's techniques. Initially, it seems a rather bland melodrama about two childhood sweethearts who are parted then reunited. The blandness is somewhat heightened by the visual blandness of Ann Harding, the female star. (She is blonde, but very visually monochromatic… minimal eyebrows or eye make-up, which makes her seem very very plain, even though she is pretty.) This was the "taste of the times" for a serious "good" woman, and the reason I have this listed as an 8 is that it is definitely dated, and will be much too slow for many viewers.The story is about dreams and architecture, so keep an eye on the buildings, there are really inventive and beautiful buildings. The stable that is supposed to be "horrible" is like a forest cottage in a fairy tale. The child casting at the beginning is funny by today's standards of continuity. These actually are pretty good child actors for the time – not cloying or overly precious - but the boy's coloring is quite dissimilar to the adult. Big brown eyes of the boy becoming the famous baby blues of Cooper. But let these things go, and the early scenes are an effective and emotionally effective set up for the payoff.The best part of the film comes in the last third. Suddenly, we are in an expressive fantasy – completely grounded in the earlier part, but also completely different. Not only are the effects here still magical, reminiscent of Durer etchings, but they are also really overwhelming when we think about how difficult it was to achieve these effects in this time period. (Any thing that fades in or out - this had to be done by re-filming with the same piece of film, etc.) While never named, it is clearly colored by the "astral body" theories of the Eastern religions that were popular in Hollywood at the time, having a strong influence on art, architecture, and design during this period.Ultimately this is a beautiful and memorable film about the strength of love, dreams, and the triumph of pure heart. This makes for a very quiet but powerful film. (Quiet and powerful became the hallmark of Cooper's screen character.) The strength of this film is its simplicity of message, and the really memorable and soulful performance of Cooper.