An American Tragedy (1931) is an American pre-Code drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg. It was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film is based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy and the 1926 play adaptation. These were based on the historic 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in upstate New York.

An American Tragedy is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of her lover, Chester Gillette. In 1923 Dreiser returned to the project, and with the help of his future wife Helen and two editor-secretaries, Louise Campbell and Sally Kusell, he completed the massive novel in 1925. The book entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2021.