While it's obvious that almost all the reviewers adored this film, I feel a voice of dissent is needed, as I have a different perspective. Although this is one of the loveliest looking films I can think of from the era, I was left cold by the film because I felt the plot didn't make much sense and because the characters were jerks---yes, jerks. To me, the film was NOT about true romance but blind infatuation and selfishness, but more about that later.

The film begins with a prologue. Young Peter Ibbetson (played by Dickie Moore) looks to be about 5 and he is alternately playing with and arguing with the little girl who is his best friend. Unfortunately, soon his mother dies and he is taken to England to live out most of the rest of his life. However, the plot demands that this little infatuation with a little girl is not only NOT forgotten but so consumes Ibbetson that decades later he returns to France to try to find this girl. This is utterly ridiculous, as was his "accidentally" discovering this same girl, now grown, quite by mistake when he fell in love with her all over again (while not realizing it was the same person). Talk about straining credibility! But, it gets worse. The lady is already married--yet Ibbetson doesn't give a darn about the husband and demands that she run off with him!!!!!! So, they're basing this "love that will withstand the ages" mostly on the vague recollections of a guy thinking about life at age 5...and this doesn't seem illogical to anyone? Plus, now the lady is married to a wealthy titled man and yet this will somehow work out?!!

When the husband finds out and tries to kill Ibettson (after all, this is a matter of honor and it is the early 19th century--a duel or simply shooting Ibbetson would have been the proper tactic),the husband is killed in the scuffle...and we are expected to feel bad only for Ibbetson and his lady love? I actually felt worse for the husband--up until then, he seemed like a decent enough sort. Sure, he shouldn't have tried to kill Peter, but can you blame him for trying to get rid of this shameless home-wrecker? Now, Ibbetson is in prison for the rest of his life.

Now here it gets weird...very weird. Ibbetson spends the rest of his life meeting with and loving Mary in his mind--and she, too, can see and experience all these meetings along with him! There is no explanation for this odd symbiosis...it just happens as if by magic. And, when he finally dies, they meet in some external bliss together. Uggh--what hooey! These portions of the film are so sticky and tough to watch.

So, the film is based on a love affair between two dumb and selfish people. Dumb, because loving somebody as a small child should NOT be the basis for uprooting and destroying lives. This movie is all emotion and no logic from start to finish. Cooper plays a selfish and mushy character who I had a hard time liking--not a rugged or manly sort of fellow, just a jerk.

So why did I still give the movie a 4 even if I though I disliked the plot so much and felt it tried to justify adultery? Well, I gotta hand it to Henry Hathaway's direction--it was a truly lovely film to look at and it was very manipulative. Plus, the great sound track really pulled on your heartstrings (whatever a 'heartstring' is).

Where does love begin and where does it end? Do our dreams keep us connected with the person we truly loved no matter where they are, even if they are deceased? A few films in Hollywood history have asked this profound question, the most famous of which is 1980's "Somewhere in Time" in which lovers Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour played time travel with each other in order to be together. In "Peter Ibettson", Gary Cooper and Ann Harding are childhood sweethearts who are somehow able to have similar dreams that ultimately are the method in which they are able to be together when circumstances tear them apart.

Cooper seems like a strange choice for this type of role, being too all-American for this dashing European character born in France and raised in England. It takes a while to accept him in this part, more obviously made for actors like Fredric March or Ronald Colman. Ann Harding, a popular leading lady barely remembered today (except by obsessive classic movie fans such as me),resembles the more famous Irene Dunne; In fact, the two of them were often cast in similar parts in the early 1930's when they were under contract to RKO. The only difference is that Dunne was able to show off her talent for comedy and was a good singer for operettas, while Harding was primarily a dramatic actress. Harding did have some comical skills she gets to show here. The roles of the characters as children are played by the talented Dickie Moore and Virginia Wiedler. Douglas Dumbrille, usually cast as the imperious heavy, is good as Moore's serious uncle, but unlike Basil Rathbone in the same year's "David Copperfield", his similar character actually means well, if not totally sympathetic. The actual villain is John Halliday as Harding's count husband whose actions are understandable considering the time, setting and circumstances. It is more the outcome of his actions than the things he does which bring on the tragedy (and fantasy) of the romantic situation. Donald Meek is also memorable as Cooper's blind employer who sees the world through a different light that instills him with much wisdom.

I'm glad that Peter Ibbetson has been done as an opera by Deems Taylor because that is the medium that this strange story would most likely be revived. It's a sad and romantic tale that they wrote back in Victorian days, but would hardly make it today.

Originally a novel by George DuMaurier, Peter Ibbetson became a play on Broadway that was written by John N. Raphaelson and starred John and Lionel Barrymore on Broadway during the 1917 season. The notion that people in love separated by man could be united and live a life in dreams would have found great popularity in that year with so many lovers and married folks separated by war.

Two children played by Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler grow up to be Gary Cooper and Ann Harding. Moore and Weidler are best friends and neighbors in Paris, a pair of English expatriate families. When Moore's mother dies, his uncle Douglass Dumbrille comes to Paris to take him back to Great Britain to raise and the children are separated.

Fast forward many years later and Ann Harding is now the Duchess of Towers and her husband John Halliday the Duke hires a promising young architect to do some major renovations on the estate and its Gary Cooper. At some point Harding and Cooper realize who they are and the memories of a bygone carefree childhood cause them to fall in love. When Halliday finds them in a compromising position, he tries to shoot Cooper who flings a chair at him and kills him.

If all things were equal Cooper at most should have been charged with manslaughter. But Halliday being a Duke gains him celebrity status and Cooper apparently without a good attorney gets sentenced to life imprisonment.

But as they are separated now, Harding and Cooper connect in their dreams each night and live an incredible life which of course means they never grow old.

For today's audience Peter Ibbetson is a bit hard to swallow, but the players are so charming and sincere you actually let your cynicism fall away. The story is remarkably similar to the operetta Maytime and no wonder Deems Taylor saw it as suitable grand opera material. In fact Peter Ibbetson's one Academy Award nomination was for its romantic musical score.

As good as Cooper and Harding are, I think in retrospect the film belongs to Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler. As the children Mimsie and Gogo, the film really belongs to them, you remember their performances throughout the movie as you watch their grownup counterparts.

Oddly enough even with a French and later English setting, Peter Ibbetson's cast is mostly American. No one in fact is more American than Gary Cooper, but few also are have as romantic persona and a face the movie camera loved as it did few others. For that reason and others Peter Ibbetson holds up well even in today's far more realistic and cynical age.